ONCE again, it almost seems a dereliction of duty to restrict this column to my cultural activities, given the momentous events taking place in Britain right now.

But I am fully aware they are covered elsewhere in the Star and if you want to read my singular take on events you can do so in my regular blog at facebook.com/attilathestockbroker.

However, as someone who opposed the far right in the 1980s and has been on the receiving end of fascist violence, I have to say this. The most poisonous thing about Johnson’s disgusting, hate-filled “surrender and betrayal” rhetoric is that he doesn’t actually believe it himself.

He doesn’t believe in Brexit, or no Brexit for that matter. He doesn’t believe in anything apart from Boris Johnson. He would have done literally anything to become Prime Minister and he’ll do literally anything to stay there.

If the Tory membership mood had been different he’d have been the new Ken Clarke. Given how it was, he decided to become a kind of pound-shop Trump and, boxed into a corner, he is rapidly morphing into the new Oswald Mosley. He should take stock of what happened to Mosley before he goes any further.

On to brighter things. Last Friday week, I fulfilled a lifelong ambition by reading what for me is the greatest radical poem of all time — all 91 verses of Shelley’s Mask of Anarchy — at an event organised by Horsham Labour Party to celebrate their most famous resident.

I’d been asked to present an evening of Shelley’s work and my own, and it gave me the ideal opportunity to re-read Paul Foot’s wonderful Red Shelley and re-acquaint myself with the fiery radicalism of the great poet.

My only criticism would be that he wrote so much of his fierce condemnation of the unspeakable inequalities and injustices of his time while swanning around in Italy. He should have hauled his arse back to England and got stuck in — he might have been around for longer too, to write, agitate and perhaps eventually become a truly radical MP instead of pointlessly drowning hundreds of miles away.  

The event was great fun, well received and a fair bit was raised for party coffers. Well done everyone. But the opposite was the case the following day, when I was involved in quite literally the most badly planned event I have ever been part of in 39 years and over 3,000 performances as Attila.

Myself and  excellent performance poet and activist Janine Booth, whose wonderful new book about her battle with breast cancer The Big J versus the Big C is now out — available at janinebooth.com and to be reviewed in my next column — were asked by Momentum to perform at an open air spoken-word event at The World Transformed in Brighton.

We were pleased to do so, less so when we found out that we were programmed at exactly the same time as Jeremy Corbyn and, not just that, but he’d be speaking 50 yards away with a much louder PA system!

It was totally surreal. There we were, doing our stuff while wanting to listen to Jeremy, with an audience who wanted to listen to Jeremy, while actually being able to hear Jeremy speaking behind us.

Momentum organisers, you get the Fluorescent Lemming Award for the worst piece of programming in the whole of history. If you’d like me to do a workshop in event-planning for you, I’d be happy to do so.

Then last Sunday I charged up to Milton Keynes to be the closing performer at their Literature Festival. Great gig, friendly bunch and lovely to see my stepson and his partner again. They are about to get married and my wife and I wish them all the love and happiness in the world.

Take care folks. And when you see ignorance, bigotry and hatred — argue with it.