THIS weekend I am always especially proud of my home city, because it’s Brighton Pride.

It’s great to showcase our inclusive, cosmopolitan, welcoming city to an increasingly intolerant world: such shows of unity are incredibly important.

I’m very proud of my football team too, because Brighton & Hove Albion have stood in the vanguard of the Football v Homophobia campaign for many years now.

As well as being a lifelong fan I used to be the club’s stadium announcer and poet in residence and a while ago was asked to write a Pride-themed poem on their behalf to welcome the partygoers.

So I did, basing it on the chants and insults we Albion fans have been subjected to down the years and our imaginative responses.

A PRIDE OF SEAGULLS

You flood our friendly city’s streets
In a flamboyant tide.
We welcome you and celebrate
The glory that is Pride.

Yes, we can see you holding hands.
It’s not that hard to tell!
Your boyfriends know that you are here —
Because they’re here as well.

This is the twenty-first century.
It’s all quite normal. Yet
Some throw such chants at Brighton fans
And think we’ll be upset…

Oh, Oscar Wilde! Such cutting wit!
No need to have them muzzled.
It’s far more fun to fling it back
And see the morons puzzled.

Thus: “You’re too ugly to be gay”
We sing. They are perplexed.
And “One nil to the nancy boys”
Just leaves them doubly vexed.

Yes, we are Brighton, from the South.
And most of us will say
Proud of our city and our club —
And proud for you today.

Having said all that, I won’t be there this weekend. I’m not a big fan of headliner Kylie Minogue. 

Instead I’ll be somewhere the music is far more to my taste — performing solo and with my band Barnstormer 1649 at what is now my favourite festival of the year, Rebellion Punk Music Festival in Blackpool where 5,000 punks, young and old, take over the Winter Gardens complex and we have a wonderful time.

I’ve written about the all-embracing and friendly nature of Rebellion before, so this year I’ll just give you my personal recommendations from the hundred-plus bands appearing.

Representing the brand new breed, the amazingly feisty young all-woman Slits-esque attack of Pussyliquor and Karl Phillips & the Rejects’ brilliant ska-punk-rap-grime gangsta parody.

From the second generation of punk, I give you the sharp politics and tunes of Bar Stool Preachers, the amiable strangeness of Wonk Unit and trainspotting obsessions of Eastfield, the uncompromising anti fascist anthems of Verona’s Los Fastidios (whom I put on at my local in Shoreham last Wednesday on their way from Italy to Blackpool) and the driving folk-punk-with-a-difference of Headsticks.

And from the early days  I’ll be watching the Stranglers, Damned,  Ruts DC, Angelic Upstarts, my mad mate John Otway, Dunstan from Chumbawamba’s interesting and clever new outfit Interrobang and the mighty and recently re-formed Red London.

And I’ll be playing fiddle with my old friend TV Smith, once of the Adverts, now a superb solo singer-songwriter.  

I’ve got three gigs myself, one solo and two with my band. It’s going to be one hell of a weekend.  And then it’s off to the Edinburgh Fringe.  

I wish all Star readers good health and good luck in the arguments I’m sure you’re having with friends, family and workmates about the current political situation.

A fundamental starting point: don’t call him Boris. He’s not your mate. His name is Johnson. US slang for knob.
 

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