THANK YOU to everyone who helped with and turned up to last week’s fundraisers in Hastings, Shoreham, Northampton, Wakefield and Ashton celebrating my 68th birthday and Robina’s and my silver wedding — and thanks to Hastings Punk Choir, ace Scottish songwriter Calum Baird and Wellingborough village man rapper Karl Phillips for joining me. We raised over £1,000 for Pauline Town’s We Shall Overcome homeless support base in Ashton, £670 for Adur and Worthing food banks and a bit for The Lab DIY venue in Northampton while having a wonderful time — and I came home just in time for one hell of a gig which rolled back the years. 

It’s nearly half a century since Tom Robinson got so pissed off with my loudness at one of the many early TRB gigs I used to go to, that he shouted “Shut UP, John. Go and form your own band!” I did. Like him, I was a bass player, but unlike him I found singing and playing bass as impossible as hiding anonymously at the back plonking away. I always knew I needed to be the centre of attention, and after a glorious stint playing bass in Brussels with the mighty Contingent I grabbed the stage name Attila the Stockbroker in 1980, jumped onstage with my poems and mandolin, and never looked back.

Almost half a century later it was wonderful to see Tom and guitarist Adam Phillips at our lovely local Ropetackle Arts Centre singing songs stretching across all five decades, from his very latest material all the way back to back to 2-4-6-8 Motorway, which I once played at least ten times in a row at a Kent Uni student disco, and the magnificent punk history ballad Days That Changed The World with, of course, new lyrics about his horrendous near-namesake (never did the word “my” make such a difference to a name). 

Bloody hell, this audience is old, I thought, and then I saw myself in the mirror when I went for a wee. There have been many days of hope in our times for sure, but the days of rage are back, and a new generation is going to have to win the battles we won all over again, which makes me so sad and so angry. 

Thanks Tom. Unlike when you were 26 and I was 19, I didn’t jump around at the front shouting “The National Front is a Nazi front” all the way through your set, and I didn’t lay siege to you in the dressing room afterwards. I just had another beer and got the 700 bus the mile and a half along the coast back to Southwick. You’ll have been pleased about that, I’m sure. You’re still a bloody hero, a big part of the soundtrack of my life, and though I was absolutely determined to get up on stage and do this for a living from the day I heard Bolan aged 11, it was you and Strummer who showed me the way.

And a big-up to @Gabrielle Sey for a great support set!

What has happened to Sheffield Wednesday is absolutely disgusting and as co-founder of Brighton Independent Supporters’ Association in the early 1990s I send solidarity on behalf of all the thousands of fans who joined together to save our club. With “owners” now often living on different continents the kind of direct action we took is often no longer possible and that leaves fans feeling completely powerless. 

It’s time for government to act. The utterly useless “fit and proper” test before a prospective owner takes over a club should be replaced by a “best interest stewardship” one. Legislation should be passed stipulating that IF an owner is obviously working against a club — for personal gain, out of stubbornness or ego or for any other reason — the government will expropriate him without compensation, appoint an independent board to run the club and, in time, hand it over to a properly established and administered fans’ trust. That would end the problem once and for all. 

Cheers everyone.