About me

In the last past months I have got a lot of feedback from other fans who told me about their background and asked me about mine. Some of them I meanwhile am proud to call “friends”. So for all who are interested in the person behind agnetha-forever, here are some personal details about me:

I’m about ten years younger than Agnetha, so take your calculators and figure it out. Married since 1992, two sons, born in 1994 and 1998. I’m living in a big city in northern Germany. (No, it’s not Hamburg.)

One guy who wrote me asked whether I was a professional writer, because he appreciated the past-present-future trilogy so much. To be honest, I was totally flattered, he really made my day, for in real life I’m nothing less than an author. I am a drop-dry scientist. Emotions or writings about emotions of any kind aren’t a part of my professional armamentarium. I myself wonder sometimes what kind of literary talent this lady has revealed out of my innermost. Well, it took some 25 years until it made it to the surface and I can tell for sure that without the ”My Colouring Book” album, which so lively reanimated the half-buried memories of the past, this website wouldn’t exist. To say it clearly, a year ago I didn’t have any idea myself that it would exist. The backbone concept was tailored in one sleepless night in the Christmas break of 2004 and a month later it went online.

Others wondered about my skills in English and Swedish. There’s no real secret behind the English issue, I have had bilingual school education, so I found in the cradle what others have to earn with hard work. Swedish, well, the story is told on the website and beside my holiday trips I read a Swedish book once in a while to stay tuned. I especially like the thrillers of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö from the seventies, as well as the more recent thriller authors like Henning Mankell and Liza Marklund.

Reading is helpful to keep up with written Swedish, but concerning spoken Swedish I meanwhile am way behind, due to lack of practice. The pronunciation of spoken Swedish is very special, there’s kind of a ”singing intonation” in it with the accentuation of syllables sometimes being very unfamiliar to people speaking English or German as their native tongue. Therefore, as a foreigner, you need constant practice to be able to understand spoken Swedish fluently. The Swedish songs of Agnetha I almost know by heart but when I got a tape copy of Agnetha’s interview with Lasse Bengtsson I had a hell of a time trying to follow, although both of them speak very clearly and accentuated. Anyway, it still is good enough to harvest an astonished expression on one or another face during the holiday trips.

So, that’s it for the moment, I guess. Anybody who wants to know more is invited to ask me, I then will decide if I tell you.

Oh yeah, last not least: a photo. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t care less whether you know how I look like or not, but I thought it could happen Agnetha checks out the site occasionally and she should know how her biggest fan looks like. I mean, it’s only fair, isn’t it? Every fan knows how she looks like, so perhaps she appreciates to know how the fans look like, once in a while. It was kind of difficult to find a suitable picture because in my family usually I am the person behind the camera. From the almost one hundred photos from our recent holiday trip to Sweden only three or four were portraying ol’ Johnny. Of course I picked the one I liked most and considered to be the most advantageous. (I think I look younger on pictures without the glasses which unfortunately seem to become inevitable for most people beyond 40.)

Dear Agnetha, if you would like to have a picture signed with an autograph and a dedication, just let me know, okay? I treasure yours, so why don’t receive one in return? It would look something like this: