HAD a great time last weekend doing three shows with my old friend TV Smith, formerly lead singer and creative force behind seminal punk band The Adverts, now a superlative solo performer with a whole string of fine albums to his name. I first saw him at Kent University in 1977 supporting The Damned, have been a big fan of his work ever since and, I’m happy to say, made a suggestion to him some 37 years ago which turned out to be a very good one.  
 

After the Adverts initial Top 20 success in the late 1970s, TV’s momentum stalled and the 1980s weren’t a good time for him, his later bands The Explorers and Cheap never reaching anything like the same heights. I went along to see him in London some time towards the end of that decade and decided to tell him something I’d been thinking for a while. “Tim,” I said, “you have great words, a fine, strong voice and a commanding stage presence. Why don’t you go solo?” 

He looked at me incredulously. “I can’t do that, John, I’ve always played in bands!” But I was insistent. “I’ve got a solo gig in London in a couple of weeks — come and support me. I dare you!” He did. He went down brilliantly. And he has never looked back since.

We did three gigs together last weekend in his home county of Devon — in Bideford, Tavistock and at his home pub, the incredible, atmospheric Highwayman Inn in Sourton near Okehampton, where he and his partner Sally made me very welcome and he played a whole string of great new songs to top up what is one of the most formidable back catalogues in the history of punk. He’s on the bill alongside the likes of Mark Thomas, John Otway and Henry Normal at Alive At The Barn, our little festival in my home village of Southwick next month. Tickets from ticketsource.com. 

Sad news. A great brewer and lovely human being left us last Wednesday: Rob Jones, founder of the Dark Star Brewery and co-owner of my lovely local, the Duke of Wellington in Shoreham. I’m sure many Star readers have sampled his creations. He was a huge supporter of our Glastonwick beer and music festival throughout its 30-year existence and we won’t half miss him. Wellyfest, our three-day festival of beer, poetry and music from June 12-14 will now be a celebration of his life. RIP. 

And finally for this week, I want to pay tribute to my mate Robin Ince, who started off as a stand-up comedian and has found his true calling as a performance poet. This normally tends to happen the other way round, because the mainstream media finds “comedy” far more palatable than poetry and, if your main aim is to be “a celebrity” who advertises undrinkable beer, infests unwatchable game shows and makes loads of money, it’s definitely the way to go. So most do. 

Robin co-wrote and was the co-star of the Infinite Monkey Cage series on Radio 4. He fell foul of the BBC not because of anything which happened as part of that programme, but because he refused to stop airing views deemed “too political” in wider life. (I completely and totally identify with this, since I’m effectively banned from the same august station for the same kind of thing, although in my case it was the actual commission which was the issue, since I was invited to write an obituary poem for Bob Crow and presented them with something deemed “not balanced!”).

Anyway, partly in response to this, Robin started writing huge amounts of perceptive, empathetic, insightful and occasionally thoroughly combative poetry (good on him!) and taking it to the stage. He is an excellent performance poet whose shambolic yet powerful presence and affable nature, combined with a vast range of subject matter from the intensely personal to the thoroughly universal, makes for a wonderful show. 

And many of his poems are now in a lovely new book, Let The Quiet Ones Rise, published by Flapjack Press, which I thoroughly recommend. He is the opposite to me — reserved, understated, subtle — and despite, or maybe because of that, we are absolute kindred spirits. I love him for his outspoken bravery and refusal to compromise with the cowed minions of the broadcasting Right. And his name is an anagram of Nob In Rice, which even at 68, I find hilarious, much to my wife’s despair.

Go and see him live, buy his books (which are many) and cherish him. 

Cheers everyone.

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