WHEN I launched myself into the world of poetry and punk rock as Attila the Stockbroker in 1980, some of my earliest poems were satirical musings about "the Russian threat" and the best-known was undoubtedly Russians in the DHSS.  The first two verses went like this:

"It first was a rumour dismissed as a lie
But then came the evidence none could deny
A double-page spread in the Sunday Express –
The Russians are running the DHSS….
 
The scroungers and misfits have done it at last
The die of destruction is finally cast
The glue sniffing Trotskyists’ final excess –
The Russians are running the DHSS!’
 
I was on a family visit to relatives who read that horrendous organ and its front page unfortunately caught my eye. It was split between scare stories about "the Russians" and outrage at "social-security scroungers."  Bored while my mother was chatting to the couple in question, I decided that the deadliest threat to Middle England would be if the two scapegoats  became a double act, so I borrowed a pen and paper and wrote the poem.   

It certainly stood me in good stead, getting me my very first play on the John Peel Show, my first poetry on vinyl — Michael Horovitz’s seminal Poetry Olympics LP — my first review in the recently sadly demised NME and my first Peel session.  Not bad for a poem written in 20 minutes in my bigoted relatives’ sitting room!