Bell Boy!

As is customary at the start of a new year, it is time to honor the fallen of the previous. Perhaps one of the saddest obituaries to write is that of former punk legend, John Lydon.

I was born too late to be a punk, but in many ways the punk ethic forms what I do… the suspicion of authority, the DIY attitude, the ability to claim I can play an instrument without any lessons or previous experience… and so Mr Rotten was a guiding light in my youth, an ambassador of anarchy and unrefined creativity.

Sure, he was a bit gobby and occasionally misguided, but who isn’t?

But his death was a tragic affair, a long drawn out illness which came to finally claim him in 2008.

It started with a serious loss of credibility in 2004 when he appeared on the reality TV show ‘I’m a Celebrity’… immediately we knew something was wrong, why would someone of such fine credentials be appearing on a third-rate programme, especially one in which participation insinuates he would consider himself nothing more than ‘a celebrity’?

We watched and we winced as he endured bush trials and maddeningly lame conversation with other celebrities, all whilst mugging to the camera in a mockery of his punkier years.

Really, the vet should have been called and he should have been put out of his misery then.

But his sickness progressed. Reports started coming in about him behaving in a manner entirely unexpected of a self-proclaimed punk…

The first relates to an incident backstage at the Summercase festival in Barcelona, where apparently Lydon presided over a verbal and phycial racist assault on the Bloc Party singer, Kele Okereke. Lydon denies this happened, but other performers back up Okereke’s account.  Racism? That’s not really what you’d expect, and as far as I understand it is not compatible with the punk ethic… but getting your entourage to fight for you, that’s really low.

But it gets worse, another assault, this time by Lydon himself… on a woman, the Welsh pop singer Duffy. Bad form, and obviously the later stages of the illness that killed him.

Of course, his last gasp of life, as far as we know occured when he ditched everything we respected about him, and basically erased everything he had ever said when he made a television advert for Country Life butter.

So, there we have it, another dead idol.