I must instantly ‘fess up to not being in any previously known sense of the words “a Smiths fan” despite today’s title being one of their songs.

The reason for its use is a newly-discovered admiration of the highest order for both Johnny Marr and Morrissey. I honestly thought I’d never utter those words. To be fair, my dislike of the band stems from a bloody miserable evening in Colchester in oooh I don’t know, late 1983 or early 1984. More precisely a bloody miserable evening getting to and from Colchester in late 1983 or 1984. I may have been completely naďve but I had no idea how far Colchester was from London or how hideous the A12 was when I accepted a freebie ticket to see the Smiths on their debut tour there. I didn’t realise that it was nearly 100 miles from home, or that there were no dual carriageways en route. It took two hours in each direction. That was bad enough.


Then we arrived at Essex Uni SU to discover that the Smiths were not planning to make their appearance until midnight. See, I told you I’d been to all of the Uni SUs in the country the other day and here I am recounting one such event a few days later – how weird is that? It was about 8pm at this point and I realised I’d got four hours in which to kick my heels and as I was driving I wouldn’t be able to have a drink so the suggested trip to the pub next door went down like a bucket of cold sick.

Strangely, popping into the pub next door turned out to be the highlight of the evening. It just so happened that John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett were playing in the bar that night and it was a fab and completely unexpected interlude in an otherwise dull evening. We went back into the Uni bar to see the Smiths who managed to grace our presence for all of 25 minutes, including encore, which was a song they’d already done in the main part of their set. The cruel lights went on at the end of the gig and the whole of the floor was a big green mush of stomped gladioli. Then there was a two hour drive home. If I’d paid for the ticket I’d have been livid.

Anyway, today both Morrissey and Johnny redeem themselves in my eyes by declaring that David Cameron is not allowed to listen to their music because as Marr says "I do forbid him to like it. He shouldn't like us because we're not his kind of people. " Or, as Morrissey also says "David Cameron hunts and shoots and kills stags - apparently for pleasure. It was not for such people that either Meat Is Murder or The Queen Is Dead were recorded; in fact, they were made as a reaction against such violence." Bloody good on you both. I can’t tell you how much this made me smile when I read about it. So, from zero to superhero in a couple of perfectly pitched quotes…now, off to Amazon to buy their back catalogue I think! Then off to bed to dream somebody loves me.

Also up there in the “bloody good on you” stakes is Hilary Mantel for reasons which you can’t have escaped to notice unless you are living in a cave if you are in the UK.