This particular mayor doesn't ride around in an over-sized black Daimler with a little pennant on the bonnet opening fetes and fixing council tax budgets.

No, Rodney Bingenheimer occupies his time spinning discs on LA's legendary KROQ radio station when he's not pressing the flesh backstage with No Doubt's Gwen Stefani.

Celebrity is in Rodney's lifeblood - his dad and stepmum stalked Bing Crosby at golf tournaments while his star-struck mum was an obsessive autograph hunter.

One day Rodney - "the kid that got beaten up on the way to high school" - was despatched by his mom to get Connie Stevens' signature.

After arriving at her Hollywood home, he was told she wasn't in. Mom drove off. That was the last time Rodney saw her for more than five years.

Moving to LA, he took the autograph obsession a up a gear, hanging out with rock'n'roll celebs - including Elvis - and bathing in their reflected glory.

After failing an audition for the Monkees, he was hired as a decoy for Davy Jones while becoming almost a surrogate son for Sonny and Cher.

Rodney was now living the Hollywood lifestyle, rubbing shoulders with likes of The Beatles, The Byrds and The Beach Boys (he helped David Bowie land his contract with RCA).

In the 1970s, he was a national columnist in the style of The Mirror's 3am Girls for Go magazine, the difference being Rodney's method was one of fawning deference.

He also ran Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, a showcase for British glamrock which attracted the likes of Led Zeppelin (whose Jimmy Page claimed Rodney got more chicks than him), Alice Cooper and T-Rex.

Director George Hickenlooper reveals Rodney as terribly isolated figure, alone in a scruffy apartment crammed with celebrity flotsam including Elvis Presley's framed driving licence and a Brooke Shields coat hanger.

Resembling no-one so much as Glenda Jackson thanks to an unlikely hairdo as well as black drainpipes and pointy shoes, he also maintains a disturbing Jimmy Savile-style relationship with his late mother.

He has no real friends - one opportunist happily escorts him backstage to meet the likes of Liam Gallagher and another hopes Rodney will help him get that elusive hit.

Now a fixture on the midnight-to-3am slot on LA's KROQ station, he is a sort weird collision between John Peel and Peter Stringfellow, obsessively hanging out with the bands that receive airplay - and American success - thanks to him.

Bowie, Chris Martin, Courtney Love, Cher are all wheeled out to pay tribute... but it's Nancy Sinatra that comes closest when she says Rodney is the Pied Piper "...and all those little rats follow him."

Tim Evans