Terminal Boardom: An Open Letter to Ian Trowell with Reference to His 'Holidays in the Sun' Exhibition (2026)

Ian Trowell: Holidays in the Sun: Sex Pistols, Scarborough and the Seaside 

Scarborough Library (2 - 30 May 2026) [1] 

'I do like to stroll along the prom, prom, prom! 

Where the punk band plays Tiddely-om-pom-pom!' [2]

 

 

I. 

 

In May 1976, the Sex Pistols decided to play their first gigs outside of the Greater London area and take their (nameless) subcultural revolution on the road - unaccompanied by Malcolm who was otherwise engaged - to Barnsley, Middlesbrough, and Scarborough ...

 

And this month, Scarborough's resident punk scholar, Ian Trowell, is marking the 50th anniversary of the Sex Pistols performing in the North Yorkshire seaside town with an exhibition mounted on half-a-dozen large display boards in the Community Space located at the rear of the main library.  

 

What is known by those within the Punk Scholars Network as archiving anarchy ... [3]

 

 

II. 

 

Titled Holidays in the Sun, the exhibition was designed in collaboration with Russ Bestley and gathers materials and testimony from the notorious band's visit to Scarborough in the spring of 1976, as well as their return visit as part of a secret tour in the summer of '77, by which time they had become public enemies number one. 

 

The images and artefacts are accompanied by a detailed and thoughtful narrative which helps create a startling contrast between the everydayness of Scarborough and the extraordinariness of the Sex Pistols. More broadly, the exhibition also reflects upon the intimate and enduring connections between  British coastal towns and youth subcultures. 

 

A series of planned events include a panel discussion on punk as anti-fashion and a talk led by Trowell on how punk has been written about over the last half-century, affording an opportunity to look at the manner in which history and memory are constructed through myth. 

 

 

III.  

So far, so press release-y. 

 

Here, I'll try to say something a wee bit more critical, in the form of an open letter that touches on the inherent friction between punk's chaotic origins and the orderly demands of curation. 

 

 

Dear Ian,

 

Firstly, congratulations on the exhibition, in which I know you've invested a good deal of time and effort (not to mention your own money). The boards provide an interesting mix of Sex Pistols lore, local history, and wider cultural context and I applaud most of your aesthetic choices. 

      Use of Jamie Reid's iconic Never Mind the Bollocks colour scheme, for example, is a nice touch. Not only does it make the display visually stimulating, but it succeeds in tying the exhibition together; i.e., it provides chromatic consistency and creates the intuitive flow between panels you were aiming for.   

      However, the black lettering works much better on the lemon-yellow background rather than Board 3's bubble-gum pink. I can't say I'm a great fan either of that headache-inducing razor font used for the main title. Personally, I'd have gone with the more familiar blackmail-style lettering; sometimes, the cliché is best.

      I also think your pedagogic will to inform coupled to a writer's love of word play [4] has, unfortunately, hindered rather than helped you here. Phrases such as 'subcultural sartorial markers' create an intellectual barrier as most people not only do not use language like this, but feel intimidated by it. It's a shame, I think, that the texts read less like a punk manifesto and more like something torn from the pages of a museum guide. 

      Their length as well as their complexity was also an issue. With board word counts doubling the recommended 150-word maximum, the narrative risks losing the casual observer, whose attention span is notoriously fleeting [5]. 

      It's for a similar reason I also wonder if it was the best decision to have a fixed sequence of display boards. For a majority of people like to float freely from one board to another, like butterflies going from flower to flower, depending on whatever catches their eye rather than follow a progressive narrative. And so, whilst you may wish to construct a logical order to the display allowing for a continuous historical narrative, it could be argued you are denying the viewer's agency to drift - a quintessentially punk mode of experiencing.

      Ultimately, the most anarcho-nihilistic iteration of this project would have been to have erected six entirely black boards à la John McCracken, thereby confounding visitors, referencing your own black square project [6], and suggesting also those imposing alien artefacts that catalyse cultural evolution in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [7]. 

 

 

IV. 

 

Amusingly - and somewhat depressingly - the Sex Pistols (feat. Frank Carter) are due to perform at the Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Sunday 2 August, 2026, supported by The Stranglers and The Undertones: buy your tickets here. 

 

It would be great if they could have Trowell's boards on display in some capacity - and I really hope Ian gets some seaside punk rock confectionary made for sale on the day. 

 

 

Ian Trowell (2026)

 

  

Notes

[1] Readers who wish to know more are encouraged to visit Trowell's Substack - SUB>SUMED - where he discusses his 'Holidays in the Sun' project in a post dated 5 March 2026: click here.

      The image used to illustrate this post is a detail from Board Number 1, taken from Ian's Instagram account: click here. 

 

[2] Lyrics (with one minor change) from the popular British music hall song 'I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside', written by John H. Glover-Kind in 1907 and made famous by music hall singer Mark Sheridan, who first recorded it in 1909. It was composed at a time when yearly visits by the British working class to the seaside were booming. Click here to play on YouTube. The Sex Pistols incorporated this song into their act in 2007, as a segue into 'Holidays in the Sun' - click here for their gig at the Brixton Academy (10 November 2007).

 

[3] I'm not entirely hostile to this process; of the three ways that the spirit of punk is exorcised - commodified by capital; Disneyfied by cunts in the media; absorbed into cultural history by academics - the latter is probably the least objectionable. See the post 'On Torn Edges and the Need to Archive' (25 March 2024): click here. 

 

[4] By his own admission, keeping text within a tight word count isn't Trowell's strong point; "I like to waffle, to draw in interesting tangents, and to play with language". See his Substack post linked to above. 

 

[5] It has been calculated that, on average, a visitor to an exhibition will only spend 10-15 seconds reading, before moving to the next thing on view. 

 

[6] I discuss Trowell's black square project in the post titled 'But Malcolm, They'll Not Be Able to Find It ...' (24 March 2024): click here. 

 

[7] As far as I remember, the featureless black monoliths in 2001 are highly advanced, multi-purpose machines built by an unseen race of aliens with very precise dimensions in a strict 1:4:9 ratio.

She's Dead I'm Alive I'm Yours: The Story of Who Paid Sid's Bail

She's Dead I'm Alive I'm Yours (feat. Sid Vicious) 

Malcolm McLaren & Vivienne Westwood 

Seditionaries (1978)

 

 

I. 

 

Created in the sixteen-week period between Nancy Spungen's murder in October 1978 and Sid's death in February 1979, the 'She's Dead I'm Alive I'm Yours' shirt was one of McLaren and Westwood's final designs for Seditionaries. 

 

Showing Vicious surrounded by dead red roses (that give the impression of blood splatter), the design was often printed on white cotton T-shirts, but featured also on long-sleeved muslin tops [1]. 

 

For some, it reflects the tragic (if seedy) romanticism of punk. For others it shows an appalling lack of taste and human decency - even the website Punk77 feels obliged to note: 'It's not even shocking anymore, just a bit sad.' [2]      

 

At the time, however, the shirt was hurriedly produced for a practical purpose; namely, to raise funds for Sid's bail and future legal fees (Vicious was accused of inflicting the single knife wound from which 20-year-old Miss Spungen died). 

 

 

II. 

 

The oft-repeated claim that Mick Jagger secretly stumped up the cash - spread by Rotten many years after the event in order to portray McLaren as uncaring and unwilling to help - is essentially false [3]. As a matter of fact, Virgin Records paid the bail [4] and Malcolm did what he could in the circumstances (even though, technically, he was no longer managing the former Sex Pistol). 

 

It was Malcolm, for example, who immediately flew to New York upon hearing of Sid's arrest and it was Malcolm who hired a lawyer to represent Vicious at the arraignment. Not Jagger - and not Rotten, who was busy promoting his new band's debut single, released the day after Spungen's murder [5]. 

 

Even when McLaren's assistance to Vicious is acknowledged, "it is often interpreted as being not only exploitative [...] but opportunistic, in that keeping Vicious alive and out of jail would maintain what remained of the Sex Pistols' viability" [6].

 

That interpretation, says Paul Gorman, does Malcolm a great disservice. For "the strenuousness with which McLaren attempted to establish Vicious's innocence and survival belies a human resolve" [7] to do the right thing by Sid and display a virtue rarely associated with punk - compassion [8].  

  

 

Notes

 

[1] An example of such can be found in the MET Collection: click here. 

 

[2] Quoted from the page devoted to Seditionaries on the long-running independent website Punk77 operated by Paul Marko: click here.  

 

[3] In a 2013 interview with the Daily Record, Rotten claimed that Jagger had generously paid the legal fees. However, any offer of financial help that may or may not have been made by Jagger never materialised. Unfortunately, the story has been widely repeated and entered into punk legend. The full interview can be read here. 

[4] Mo Ostin, the boss of Warner Records - the Sex Pistols' American label - refused to help and, in fact, "used the murder case to terminate the recording contract with Vicious, Jones and Cook", whilst maintaining a good working relationship with Rotten. 

      McLaren also asked Billy Meshel, the group's US music publisher at Arista, but he too declined to cough up the cash. Left with no other choice, McLaren turned to Richard Branson and the Virgin boss agreed to pay the $50,000 bail (as a kind of advance on delivery of the soundtrack to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle). 

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 407.

 

[5] Rotten's new group, Public Image Ltd., who were signed to Virgin, released their first single, 'Public Image' on 13 October, 1978. Their debut album, Public Image: First Issue followed in December of that year. 

      For all Rotten's professed sadness and guilt over what became of his friend, he actually did nothing to help - essentially writing Vicious off as a lost cause. His claims that he was prevented by McLaren from helping are, one suspects, a lot of baloney.  

 

[6] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, p. 406. 

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

[8] Obviously, I'm aware that, for McLaren, human tragedy and brilliant branding were never mutually exclusive and that while it's legitimate to credit him for showing up in New York when others didn't, we should be careful not to mistake his actions as pure compassion. 

      If, on the one hand, he seemed to genuinely care for Sid and want to keep him out of prison, on the other hand he was not above making the most of events for his own artistic and commercial ends.   

 

You Are Reading a Post About Making a Film About Mark Fisher

We Are Making a Film About Mark Fisher (2025)

Poster image by Joe Magee 

closeandremote.net

 

We are assembling a post about Mark Fisher and, 

now that you're reading this, so are you ... 

 

 

I. 

 

There was an interesting piece in The Guardian a couple of days ago, by Lauren Kelly [1]. It was on Mark Fisher; a cultural theorist who, somewhat ironically, continues to haunt the media almost ten years after his death and seventeen years after he published the slim volume - Capitalist Realism (2009) - that ensured he would be born posthumously.

 

It's a good book [2]. But, like many other works regarded as seminal, it now risks becoming a kind of foundational text - i.e., essential reading for those who wish to have an understanding of contemporary neoliberal culture conveniently packaged and given a stamp of approval by critics, commentators, and other left-leaning intellectuals who secretly envy its astonishing popularity and sales figures [3].

 

Ultimately, it's easier to keep referencing Fisher c. 2009 and regurgitate his critique, rather than imagine an alternative future oneself. Of course, that's not Fisher's fault and, in his later work, he seemed keen to stress that Capitalist Realism was only ever intended as a starting point and not meant to be the last word on any of the subjects it touched upon.

 

Fisher spoke about developing post-capitalist desire and acid communism, but it's his debut book that most readers seem to fixate on and find most relevant [4], in the same way that orthodox punk fans still think Never Mind the Bollocks was the Sex Pistols' finest moment, rather than The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle.       

 

 

II.  

  

Whatever one thinks of Fisher, the fact is he's an increasingly influential and pervasive figure and there's currently an experimental documentary doing the rounds that aims to disseminate his ideas to a still wider audience by mixing theory with real-world footage.

 

Titled We Are Making a Film About Mark Fisher (2025), this 65-minute film written and directed by Simon Poulter [5], cheerfully places itself outside the world of mainstream production; it was funded by Poulter and fellow artist Sophie Mellor (who edited the work), using an Instagram account to recruit a network of seventy collaborators - including a technical crew - to assist with the project.

 

There was no advance budget; no studio backing; and no institutional permissions - just the determination to make a film that affirmed Fisher's belief that decapitalised cultural production and collective agency was still possible among the ruins of neoliberal atomisation.

 

Methodologically, the work draws from both situationism and the rhizomatic philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari - rejecting arborescent models in favour of open systems of exchange:

 

"By way of archival recordings, interviews and fictional performance, Fisher's philosophy of 'hauntology' recurs throughout [...] maintaining that modern society, as a result of 'capitalist realism', is haunted by futures that failed to happen [... as] narrator Justin Hopper explains." [6]  

 

Since the autumn of last year, Poulter's film has been screened "in universities, back gardens, cinemas, living rooms and art galleries located everywhere from Coventry to Brisbane, Australia, via Malmö, Sweden" [7]. 

 

I've not seen it yet - I'm hoping to attend the screening at the ICA on 19 May - but would like to offer support to the work carried out by Mellor and Poulter working as Close and Remote. I might not share all their political views and moral values, but, nevertheless, I feel a certain level of comradeship - not least of all because Poulter is an old punk rocker and a man who loves butterflies ...  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Lauren Kelly, 'The man who saw the future: the legacy of cultural theorist Mark Fisher', in The Guardian (17 April 2026): click here. 

 

[2] Funnily enough, I haven't written a post critically reviewing the book, even though I have done so for other works by Fisher: click here, for example, for fragmened remarks on Ghosts of My Life (2022); or here for part one of a two-part post on The Weird and the Eerie (2016). I am planning to examine Fisher's most well-known text shortly. 

 

[3] According to Lauren Kelly in her Guardian piece: "As of December 2025, more than 250,000 English-language versions of Capitalist Realism have been sold, with translations available in Spanish, Italian, Arabic Mandarin, German, Portuguese, Polish, Japanese, Hebrew, Korean and Danish."  

 

[4] I think it's fair to say that Fisher's concept of acid communism has not attained the same widespread cultural recognition as his thinking on capitalist realism. Primarily, that's because his work in this area was cut short by his suicide in 2017 - acid communism exists only as an introduction and a few notes - but it's also the case that the former was a far more speculative concept, whereas the latter is a tangible malaise experienced here and now. 

      Given the choice, most people, it appears, prefer to feel depressed by the present, than imagine their future happiness based on the retrieval of old dreams and unrealised desires. A few academics, artists, and old school k-punk fans might be excited by the concept, but acid communism is a bit niche for mainstream readers (and maybe - since it relies on a certain level of political and countercultural utopianism rooted in the late 1960s and early 1970s - it seems a tad nostalgic and old-fashioned for younger readers who don't remember this time).  

 

[5] Torpedophiles will recognise the name of artist and aurelian Simon Poulter from a post published on 1 Feb 2026: click here.    

 

[6] Lauren Kelly ... see reference and link in note 1 above. It should be pointed out that Justin Hopper doesn't narrate as himself, but in character as Professor Parkins; a spectral guide to Mark Fisher's life and work.

 

[7] Ibid. 

 

 

Bonus: click here to play the trailer to We Are Making a Film About Mark Fisher (2025). 

Sid Vicious Vs the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society

Sid Vicious (Sex Pistol) Vs Chris Jones (Editor of the

Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society Newsletter)

'Tunbridge Wells is Tunbridge Wells, and there is nothing really like it upon our planet.' [1]

 

 

I. 

 

Tunbridge Wells - or, as it likes to style itself Royal Tunbridge Wells - is a town in Kent, about 30 miles southeast of London, with a reputation for being a bastion of conservative middle class values and disgust with any ideas which might possibly conflict with these values. 

 

 

II.

 

Sid Vicious was assigned the role of bass player for the Sex Pistols after Glen Matlock was pushed out of the band in February 1977. He couldn't play, but he looked good and had the right attitude and his tragic death two years later, aged 21, established him as a punk icon.  

 

 

III.

 

In 2017, Chris Jones, editor of the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society Newsletter, decided to offer readers his personal view on the question of whether Sid Vicious should be commemorated with a red plaque, due to the fact that he had lived for several years as a child in Tunbridge Wells (1965-71), before moving with his mother to Stoke Newington. 

 

In a nutshell: he wasn't happy about the idea, describing Sid as an exhibitionist thug - which is not entirely unfair or wildly mistaken - and challenging the idea that he should be celebrated as a symbol of youthful rebellion:   

 

"He was rebelling certainly, but mainly against the preceding generation of popular culture the 'peace and love' generation, which, as you might gather, was 'my generation'. We were idealistic, campaigning for a fairer world, civil rights, equal pay, and fighting against apartheid and the Vietnam War. To Sid Vicious, though, we were pretentious,and perhaps some of our beliefs, or the expressions of those beliefs can seem a little twee ..." [2] 

 

In a piece that becomes increasingly laughable as the moral and political rhetoric is ramped up, Jones continues:     

 

"Sid, though, was driven by darker thoughts and motivations. He would not have liked today's Tunbridge Wells: open-minded, international, tolerant, proud to have been the only part of Kent to vote 'Remain'. He would have thought us politically-correct, though he may have used rather stronger language." [3] 

 

 

IV. 

 

This, obviously, is an old story. 

 

I'm sharing it, however, partly because I'd not heard it until a few days ago and partly because it amazes me that, forty years after the event, punk - and the memory of the Sex Pistols in particular - can still get members of civic society hot under the collar; that the ghost of Sid Vicious can still frighten and appall old hippies like Jones.     

 

Needless to say, Sid didn't get his plaque: it was decided that his connection to the town was too slight to merit recognition (but that no moral or musical judgement was being passed on the deceased Sex Pistol). 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] H. G. Wells, Christina Alberta's Father (Jonathan Cape, 1925). 

 

[2] Chris Jones, writing in an editorial for the Royal Tunbridge Wells Civic Society Newsletter (Autumn 2017): click here. 

 

[3] Ibid.

 

If You Want to Change the World, Start By Making Your Own Fucking Bed!

Yoko Ono, John Lennon, and Maria de Soledade Alves 

Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (25 March 1969)

Photo by Charles Ley 

 

 

I. 

 

Although there are things that one might admire about John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, I can't say I'm a fan. Indeed, if pushed, I would have to admit that any trace of affection is blotted out by a good deal of animosity and suspicion. 

 

Mostly, that's due to Malcolm Mclaren having taught my generation to never trust a hippie - particularly those who are working in the arts and music business. For when you look beneath the long hair and countercultural bullshit, you soon uncover a crucial (and hypocritical) disconnect betweeen the utopian vision we are asked to imagine and their own lavish lifestyles, often involving enormous wealth and celebrity.

 

 

II. 

 

That was certainly the case with John & Yoko [1] and, for me, no photo brings this home better than the one reproduced above showing the honeymooning couple waiting for a housekeeper to change the sheets on their bed at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel, so that they can continue with their Bed-in for Peace protest [2] against the evils of war, injustice, and capitalist exploitation.      

 

The photo, by Charles Ley, was originally published in the Daily Mirror (26 Mar 1969) with the headline 'Beatle John and Yoko are forced out of their £20-a-day bed by Maria, the hotel maid', and went on (in mocking tones) to explain how a Portuguese maid, named Maria de Soledade Alves, had interrupted Day Two of the revolutionary happening held in a flower-scented presidential suite, in order to change the bed linen [3].

 

After watching her complete her duties - and without lifting a finger to help - the 28-year-old Beatle and his 34-year-old wife hopped happily back into bed and continued their protest. 

 

 

III. 

 

When Johnny Rotten was asked why he didn't want to accompany the Sex Pistols to Brazil and perform with the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs [4], he explained that he disliked the romanticised narrative surrounding the whole affair and particularly objected to the fact that the train driver, 57-year-old Jack Mills, was seriously injured during the robbery: That could have been my father.

 

And that's pretty much how I feel when I look at this photo: That could have been my mother [5] - obliged to make the bed in front of two long-haired, hippie layabouts and laughing members of the press.  

 

 

Notes

 

[1] By the time of Lennon's death in 1980, his estate was valued at approximately $200 million (that's closer to $800 million in today's money). This fortune was largely amassed from music royalties, but Yoko - who came from a wealthy Japanese banking family - had also made some astute investments in NYC real estate and modern art.   

 

[2] In 1969, John & Yoko staged a unique form of protest called the Bed-ins for Peace, which, as the name indicates, involved staying in bed all day, growing your hair, and giving interviews to the world's media. 

      They held two week-long protests; the first at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam and the second at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, during which they invited several famous friends to drop by, including the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and psychedelic psychologist Timothy Leary. It was here, on 1 June 1969, that they also recorded the song 'Give Peace a Chance'.   

      The events were filmed, of course, and readers who wish to learn more might like to watch the documentary Bed Peace (1969), starring John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and shared on YouTube: click here. 

 

[3] Readers who wish to read the article in the Daily Mirror in full, can find it reproduced on the website Vintage Everyday: click here. 

      When asked later whether he and Yoko were irritated by the fact that the press, for the most part, didn't take the Bed-in seriously, Lennon replied that he wasn't; that in fact he and Yoko didn't want to be taken seriously. Fifty years after the event, Yoko Ono stood by the central message being preached, but conceded that it was naive to think you could change the world from the comfort of one's bed. 

 

[4] See the post 'And God Save Ronald Biggs' (5 Jan 2026): click here.  

 

[5] My mother wasn't Portuguese, but she did work, briefly and part-time, at a Trust House Forte hotel, where she had the exhausting job of making the beds in the morning.   

 

 

And God Save Ronald Biggs

Jamie Reid promotional poster for the Sex Pistols' single 

'No One is Innocent' (Virgin Records, 1978)

 

Ronnie Rotten - he never sang for Scotland Yard, but he burst his lungs for the Sex Pistols ...

 

  

I. 

 

If you want to understand the Sex Pistols, then it probably helps to conceive of them more as an adolescent criminal gang, led by former art student Malcolm McLaren, who peddled anarchy and fetish fashion from their hideout on the King's Road, rather than simply a punk rock band fronted by Johnny Rotten [1]. 

 

Instead of chasing chart success and pop stardom, the idea was to generate cash from chaos, aestheticise evil, and celebrate the outlaw à la Jean Genet [2] who recognised in the ruthlessness and cunning of murderers and thieves a sunken beauty.  

 

Thus, for example, one of the earliest shirts sold at SEX featured the leather mask of the notorious Cambridge Rapist. And so it was that when Rotten was thrown overboard for collaborating with the record companies so as to establish a long-term, professional career in music, he was replaced not by some hopeless teen wannabe, but by Great Train Robber and fugitive Ronnie Biggs ... [3]  

 

 

II. 

 

Biggs, who had daringly escaped from Wandsworth Prison fifteen months into his thirty year sentence, was still wanted by the British authorities, but had immunity from extradition, having fathered a child in Brazil, where he had been living since 1970.

 

He and the two remaining Sex Pistols - Paul Cook and Steve Jones - got on well, writing and recording a new track together, entitled 'No One is Innocent' [4], which was released as a single on 30 June 1978, coupled with Sid's unique version of 'My Way'. Despite a (predictable) BBC ban, it reached number 7 in the UK Singles Chart [5]. Biggs also recorded a version of 'Belsen Was a Gas', which was included on the The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle soundtrack (1979) [6]. 

 

I know many people - including fans of the band - were either perplexed or pissed-off by McLaren's decision to replace Rotten with Biggs as the new singer with the Sex Pistols [8], but I tend to agree with Jamie Reid that it was a brilliant (and necessary) move which demonstrated an idea crucial to the pluralistic politics of The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, namely, that anyone can be a Sex Pistol [9].

 

 

III.

 

In February 1978, McLaren joined Cook and Jones in Brazil. Filmmaker Julien Temple was also there to shoot the scenes with Biggs for the Swindle, including an expensive riverboat sequence to promote the new song, which had been recorded at a local 16-track studio with overdubs later added back in London at Wessex Studios, by audio engineer Bill Price. 

 

The thing is - and I think this is something even those who dismiss the track as simply a cynical attempt to stir controversy and grab headlines will admit - it does sound like a Sex Pistols track; even without Rotten on vocals. Thanks to Jones's distinctive guitar and Cook's solid work as always on drums, it has typical swagger and a huge amount of energy. 

 

And for those who, like me, appreciate the absurd anarchy of the Swindle rather than the austere monarchy of Never Mind the Bollocks, it's a fantastic single. 

 

To play 'No One is Innocent' (audio only) click here. 

 

To play (with official video using footage from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980)), click here.

 

 

Sex Pistols (sans Rotten and Vicious): 

Jones / Rowland / McLaren / Cook /Biggs (1978)

 

      

Notes

 

[1] I think it's important to acknowledge that the key figure in the band was never really Rotten; it was Steve Jones, a semi-professional tea leaf with more than a dozen criminal convictions; someone described by Glen Matlock as resembling a character from a book by Jean Genet. 

 

[2] See the post 'God Save Jean Genet' (2 Feb 2026), in which the French writer is considered in relation to the Sex Pistols: click here. 

 

[3] Whilst I cannot go into too much detail here, I thought readers who are unfamiliar with the name and the robbery with which Biggs is forever associated, might appreciate a few lines of explanation ...

      Ronald Biggs was a petty criminal from South London who helped plan and carry out the Great Train Robbery on 8 August 1963 (his 34th birthday). Whilst in The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) he is portrayed as the legendary mastermind behind the robbery, he actually had a very minor role. 

      The gang got away with £2.6 million (equivalent to around £70 million today), so a considerable sum of money then as now and the holding up of a Royal Mail train travelling from Glasgow to London was an enormous story in the British press, dominating headlines for weeks afterwards and remaining in the cultural imagination ever since. For some people it still remains the crime of the century and, despite what happened to the train's driver, Jack Mills, the robbers are often regarded as folk heroes who got one over the authorities. For even though Biggs and eleven other gang members were arrested just three weeks after the robbery and received long prison sentences, most of the money was never recovered.

      Biggs subsequently became notorious for his escape from prison in July 1965, living thereafter as a fugitive in foreign exile (and with a new identity) for thirty-six years. The money - as it always does - soon ran out (mostly on legal fees and other expenses relating to his exile, although £40,000 also went on plastic surgery), so Biggs was obliged to do whatever he could to secure and income - including the selling of his soul for punk.  

      In 2001, feeling increasingly homesick - telling friends that he longed to walk into an English boozer once more and order a pint -  he announced to The Sun newspaper that he would be willing to return to the UK. Still having twenty-eight years of his sentence left to serve, he was aware that he would be detained upon arrival in Britain and spend time in prison: which he did. However, due to his health rapidly declining, he was (eventually) released on compassionate grounds in August 2009 (two days before his 80th birthday and having served a third of his original sentence). 

      Biggs died in a North London nursing home on 18 December 2013. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 3 January 2014. The coffin was covered with the flags of the UK and Brazil (and a Charlton Athletic scarf). An honour guard of British Hells Angels escorted his hearse to the crematorium.

 

[4] Before Virgin vetoed the idea, the track was originally to be called 'Cosh the Driver', tastelessly referencing the fact that during the robbery the driver of the intercepted train, Jack Mills, was blugeoned with an iron bar. Mills never fully recovered from his serious head injuries - nor overcome the trauma of what he had experienced - although he died of an unrelated cause (leukaemia), in 1970. 

      The 12" single - which I bought along with the 7" - came with a different sleeve, featuring a still from The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980) in which the American actor Henry Rowland (dressed as Nazi on the run Martin Bormann; a role he had played in a number of Russ Meyer movies) is shown playing bass alongside Jones on guitar, Cook on drums, and Biggs on lead vocals. It also came with a different title: 'The Biggest Blow - A Punk Prayer by Ronnie Biggs' (Virgin Records, 1979).  

 

[5] The single was not released in the US and failed to chart in other overseas territories. 

 

[6] Readers might be surprised to learn that this was not Biggs's first outing as a recording artist. For Biggs, an avid jazz fan, had previously collaborated in 1974 with three musicians to make a musical narrative of his life entitled Mailbag Blues. The album was finally released in 2004 (whatmusic.com) and is "a fusion of experimental jazz, blues and funk, with echoes of Brazilian styles such as tropicalia and bossa nova" and although Biggs doesn't actually sing on the record, he is credited as inspiration and storyteller. See Alex Bellos, 'Ronnie Biggs: the album', in The Guardian (1 Sept 2004): click here. To listen to the title track - 'Mailbag Blues' - please click here. 

      Biggs also had a post-Pistols recording career; in 1991, he provided vocals for the songs 'Police on My Back' and 'Carnival in Rio' by German punk band Die Toten Hosen, and two years later Biggs sang on three tracks for the album Bajo Otra Bandera by Argentinian punk band Pilsen. You can find some of these songs on YouTube, but, frankly, I'd not bother.

 

[7] McLaren's original plan was for the group - including Rotten - to fly down to Rio de Janeiro after the final US show in San Francisco, so that they could be filmed performing with Biggs. Paul Gorman writes: "The combination of the UK's most wanted felon cavorting with the world's most hated group amid the favelas during Carnival was too good an opportunity to let pass, McLaren believed." 

      But Rotten wanted nothing to do with the idea and his refusal to comply with McLaren's latest scheme effectively brought the curtain down on his career as a Sex Pistol. Interestingly, Gorman is sympathetic to the singer here: 

      "With justification, Lydon viewed Biggs as a charmless nerk rather than an anti-hero deserving of glorification, not least since the train driver in Biggs's gang crime had suffered severe brain damage from injuries inflicted upon him during the raid."

      See Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), pp. 386 and 388. 

 

[8] Jamie Reid would later explain:

      "'One of the things we were aware of was the need never to remain still, never to become stagnant. After three or four records have come out there begins to be a typical punk fan, who identifies with the band the way fans always do. When Rotten left and we put in Ronnie Biggs, they couldn't understand. It seemed a good idea to us.'"

      Quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm Mclaren, p. 402. 

God Save Joe Orton

Joe Orton anachronistically wearing a 

Seditionaries Prick Up Your Ears T-shirt

in a photo by George Elam (1967) 

 

'The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste 

invariably have very bad taste.'

 

 

I. 

 

Remembered primarily as a playwright who came to a sticky end at the hands of his lover, Joe Orton was a gay, working class English writer who, in a brief but brilliant public career lasting from 1964 until his murder in 1967, outraged and amused audiences with his scandalous black comedies, characterised by a mix of cynicism and sauciness [1].  

 

 

II. 

 

After leaving school, Orton got a job as an office junior whilst also developing an interest in the performing arts, joing a number of am-dram societies in his home town of Leicester. He obviously showed promise, as, in November 1950, he was offered a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, which he took up the following spring.   

 

It was at RADA that Orton met Kenneth Halliwell, seven years his senior, and they formed a strong romantic relationship, moving into a West Hampstead flat together (shared with two other students). 

 

After graduating, they collaborated on a number of novels. However, as these failed to set the literary world alight (or even find a publisher), Orton and Halliwell decided it might be best to write separately, scraping by as best they could on benefits and monies earned from part-time jobs, whilst amusing themselves with various pranks; such as removing books from their local library in order to modify them (i.e., deface the covers with comically surreal images and additional text), before returning them to the shelves [2].   

 

They were eventually nicked by the police and charged with larceny and damage to property deemed to be wilfully malicious in nature. After pleading guilty at Old Street magistrates (in May 1962), each received a six-month custodial sentence (and a £2 fine). Interestingly, whilst Halliwell hated being in jail and attempted suicide, Orton seemed to enjoy himself and find inspiration. His career as a powerful and subversive writer arguably has its origins in his time behind bars and shortly after his release he wrote Entertaining Mr Sloane [3]. 

 

 

III.

 

The unduly harsh nature of the prison sentence, which Orton suspected was due to the fact that he and Halliwell were queers, brought home to him the fact that corrupt priggishness and hypocrisy still exercised its power and authority in the UK, even after the Chatterley Trial: 

 

"It affected my attitude towards society. Before I had been vaguely conscious of something rotten somewhere, prison crystallised this. The old whore society really lifted up her skirts and the stench was pretty foul." [4]

 

Orton's next performed work was Loot (1965); a dark two-act work that satirises social and religious attitudes to death, as well as the integrity of the police. It opened to severe criticism, but, after numerous edits and rewrites, a London production in the autumn of 1966 received rave reviews, several awards, and established Orton's reputation. He was even able to sell the film rights for £25,000 (that's over half-a-million nicker in today's money and was a record figure at the time).     

 

 

IV. 

 

Orton's final play, What the Butler Saw, was a clever modern farce that he completed writing in July 1967, one month before his death [5]. It opened at the Queen's Theatre, London, on 5 March 1969 and was met with a hostile audience reaction; boos and cries of rubbish were heard coming from the balcony and some people walked out, protesting the play's raunchy character and obvious contempt for authority.

 

There is, finally, one more work I would like to mention; Up Against It - an unproduced film script written in 1967 for the Beatles, who were then at the height of their fame. 

 

After submitting the script to their manager, Brian Epstein, it was returned to Orton following a long period of silence and without comment. It's anarchic, sexually explicit, and subversive tone was deemed too potentially damaging to the Beatles' carefully managed public image and inappropriate for a mainstream movie audience [6]. 

 

In fact, the dark and chaotic script might have better suited Malcolm McLaren's Sex Pistols ...

 

 

V.   

 

It's not wrong to consider Orton a defining figure (and diarist) of London in the 1960s; his work and lifestyle embodied the rebellious and sexually liberated spirit of the counterculture during that era. 

 

But, having said that, I can't help thinking of him as more of a trickster-punk than a peace-loving hippie - even if he did have a Beatles song played at his funeral. And Malcolm McLaren was a great admirer, considering Orton an inspiration for the punk aesthetic that he and Vivienne Westwood had created in their shop at 430 King's Road.   

 

Thus it is that Orton's name appears on the right side (literally and figuratively) of the 'You're Gonna Wake Up' manifesto (1974). And thus it is that, in 1979, McLaren and Westwood produced the 'Prick Up Your Ears' shirt for Seditionaries, which comes with a quotation taken from Orton's diary (I write in more detail about this shirt in a post that can be accessed by clicking here). 

 

As Paul Gorman notes, for McLaren, Orton was a "remorseless cultural provocateur" [7] and a kindred spirit; someone who drew inspiration (as he did) from the gutter and delighted in the prospect of fucking the rich up the arse.    

  

 

Notes

 

[1] The comparison with Oscar Wilde is often made and it's not an unreasonable comparison to make; both used wit to expose the moral hypocrisies of their respective societies, often focusing on the absurdity of authority. Writing in the more permissive 1960s, rather than the Victorian 1890s, allowed Orton to be more explicitly transgressive than Wilde, though I'm not sure he was more anarchic or provocative.

      For a critical essay on this pair of queer iconoclasts, see John Bull, 'What the butler did see: Joe Orton and Oscar Wilde', in Francesca Coppa (ed.), Joe Orton: A Casebook (Routledge, 2002), pp. 45-60. 

 

[2] In their defence, Orton and Halliwell were protesting what they regarded as an appalling selection of books; endless shelves of rubbish, as they put it. See Ilsa Colsell's Malicious Damage: the Defaced Library Books of Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton (Donlon Books, 2013). 

      And see also the excellent article by Jonathan Jones titled 'Joe Orton's defaced library books and the death of rebellious art', in The Guardian (14 Oct 2011): click here. Jones argues that their amusing (if somewhat juvenile) defacement of library books was "a glorious rejection of the austerity and ordinariness that still set the British tone in 1962" and anticipated the manner in which the Sex Pistols scandalised a moribund nation in the following decade.  

      Amusingly, the book covers Orton and Halliwell vandalised have since become a valued part of the Islington Local History Centre collection and some are exhibited in the Islington Museum (i.e., they have been recuperated by the Spectacle). A collection of the book covers is also available online at the Joe Orton Gallery: click here.  

 

[3] Joe Orton (1964) as quoted on joeorton.org: click here. 

 

[4] The three-act play Entertaining Mr Sloane premiered at the New Arts Theatre (London) on 6 May 1964, produced by Michael Codron. Reviews ranged from praise to outrage, with one critic for The Times declaring that it made his blood boil more than any other British play in the last decade. The play was transferred to Wyndham's Theatre in the West End at the end of June and then to the Queen's Theatre in October, and Orton was hailed as a promising new talent. 

 

[5] On 9 August 1967, Halliwell bludgeoned 34-year-old Orton to death at their home in Islington with multiple hammer blows to the head. Halliwell then killed himself with an overdose of Nembutal. It seems likely that Orton had wanted to terminate their relationship (albeit not in such a literal fashion). 

 

[6] The screenplay was filled with what was termed outlaw sexuality and it should be recalled that homosexuality had only (partially) been decriminalised in July of 1967. Paul McCartney would later admit that the Beatles didn't wish to do the film because it was gay and they were not.  

      Interestingly, in 1979, John Lydon initiated a High Court case against Malcolm McLaren and his management company, Glitterbest. While the primary goal was to reclaim misappropriated royalties and the rights to the Sex Pistols name, Rotten also wanted to make clear his objection to the salacious and immoral elements contained in the script upon which the film that eventually became The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) had been based. Arguing that the script portrayed him and other members of the band in a defamatory and harmful light, Rotten also made it clear that he had no wish to be associated with infamous figures including Jack the Ripper, Myra Hindley and Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs. Nor, indeed, did he approve of any scenes involving extreme sexual and violent content. 

 

[7] Paul Gorman, The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 426.  

  

 

To read a sister post to this one - God Save Jean Genet (2 Feb 2026) - please click here. 

 

Bonus video: a short clip of Joe Orton being interviewed on The Eamon Andrews Show (ABC Weekend TV, 23 April, 1967): click here. A decade later, Andrews' co-presenter on the Thames TV show Today, Bill Grundy, would interview the Sex Pistols, who weren't prepared to play along in such a charming manner as Orton.  

 

 

God Save Jean Genet

Sex Pistols ft. Jean Genet (SA/2026)

Photo credits: Sex Pistols by Bob Gruen (1976) 

and Jean Genet by Brassaï (1948)   

 

Beauty is the projection of ugliness and to achieve harmony in bad taste 

is the height of style ...

 

 

I.

 

Jean Genet (1910–1986) was a seminal French writer and political activist whose life was defined by his transition from a marginalized outcast to a celebrated avant-garde icon. 

 

Born to a prostitute mother and placed into foster care, he spent his youth banged up in reformatories and prisons for crimes including theft and vagrancy [1], before joining the Foreign Legion at eighteen, from which he was dishonourably discharged on grounds of indecency (that is to say, well, I think we can all imagine what he was caught doing). 

 

After this, Genet stole and slept his way round Europe as a tea leaf and rent boy, before ending up in and out of prison in Paris; experiences that served as the primary inspiration for his lyrical debut novel, Notre-Dame des Fleurs (1943) [2].

 

Genet's later work - which includes novels such as Journal du voleur (1949) [3] and plays such as Les Bonnes (1947) [4] - is renowned for its stylised (but uncompromising) exploration of power and the beauty of evil, as well as the subversion of social hierarchies and the transgression of traditional morality (often giving iconic status to outlaws and outcasts, punks and queers).   

 

 

II.

 

Genet was championed by both Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre [5] and, in his later years, following the events of May '68, he became increasingly active politically, advocating for all kinds of oppressed groups and radical causes and participating in various demonstrations. 

 

In 1970, Genet spent three months in the United States at the invite of the Black Panthers, before then spending six months visiting Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan [6]. He also became pally with Foucault during this time and, in his experimental text Glas (1974), Jacques Derrida contrasted Genet's ideas on crime, homosexuality and all the reste with Hegel's philosophy, in order to deconstruct traditional concepts of the law, family, and the ideal of Wholeness (or the Absolute) [7].   

 

Like Joe Strummer, Genet expressed solidarity with the Red Army Faction (or Baader-Meinhof Gang); a militant far-left group designated as a terrorist organisation by the West German government, publishing an article titled Violence et brutalité in Le Monde (2 Sept. 1977) [8]. 

 

Whilst Strummer was, of course, simply posing in a T-shirt - the Clash specialised in radical chic - Genet was driven by a deep-seated hatred for Western imperialism and French bourgeois society in particular; in 1985, the year before his death, he informed a shocked interviewer from the BBC that he loathed France so much that he had even supported the Nazis when they invaded Paris. 

  

 

III. 

  

Whilst Genet never collaborated with the Sex Pistols - nor ever refer to them in his writings or interviews - it's tempting to imagine that he would have found McLaren and Westwood's tiny shop at 430 King's Road a conceptual space very much to his liking, promoting as it did anarchy, sexual deviance, and the kind of transgressive behaviour that he seemed so excited by.

 

And if we define the denizens of 430 King's Road as Peter York once famously defined them - "the extreme ideological wing of the peculiars" [9] - or, alternatively, recall the description of them from the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (1980) - "a kamikaze gang of cat burglers and child prostitutes" [10] - then it's possible that Genet would have identified with the Sex Pistols and acknowledged how his legacy found youthful expression via punk [11]. 

 

But, again, just to be clear - there is no evidence of a direct relationship between Jean Genet and the Sex Pistols and I don't remember Malcolm ever mentioning his name, whereas he would often refer to other poets and playwrights he admired, such as Oscar Wilde and Joe Orton. The speculative connection suggested here is largely based on the fact that both McLaren and Genet understood style as a form of refusal and aligned themselves with the counterculture. 

 

On the other hand, however, it's worth noting that while Genet may have appreciated the SEX and Seditionaries aesthetic, by the mid-1970s he had become increasingly cynical about art and theatrical rebellion and so it's possible that he would have dismissed punk as just another fashion and commercial commodification, rather than something genuinely subversive or dangerous - who knows? 

  

 

Notes 

 

[1] Genet's mother raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption (one likes to believe she did so with good intentions and was putting the child's interests first). According to his biographer, his foster family was loving and attentive. Neverthless, his childhood involved numerous attempts to run away and incidents of petty criminality (even whilst the obviously bright boy got good grades at school). Eventually, aged fifteen, Genet was sent to a brutal penal colony, where he spent three unhappy years. 

 

[2] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frechtman, was published as Our Lady of the Flowers in 1949. 

 

[3] The first English edition, trans. Bernard Frectman, was published as The Thief's Journal (1964).

 

[4] This work was again first translated into English by Bernard Frechtman and was published as The Maids by Grove Press in the United States (1954), and by Faber in the UK (1957). A famous film adaptation, dir. Christopher Miles and starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York, was released in cinemas in 1975.

 

[5] When Genet arrived in Paris, he sought out and introduced himself to Jean Cocteau and the latter, impressed by his writing, used his contacts to help get Genet's first novel published. 

      Later, in 1949, when Genet was threatened with a life sentence after notching up ten convictions, Cocteau and other prominent intellectuals, including Jean-Paul Sartre, successfully petitioned the French President to have the sentence set aside. In gratitude - and perhaps realising there was more money to be made from art than crime - Genet stayed on the straight and narrow after this (or, at any rate, he avoided being caught doing anything that might return him to a prison cell).

      By this date, Genet had completed five novels, three plays, and numerous poems, many controversial for their explicit and often deliberately provocative portrayal of homosexuality and criminality. In 1952, Sartre wrote a long analysis of Genet's existential development (from vagrant to writer), entitled Saint Genet. Profoundly affected by Sartre's analysis, Genet did not write for the next five years, during which time he became emotionally attached to Abdallah Bentaga, a tightrope walker. Following Bentaga's suicide in 1964, Genet entered a period of depression and attempted to end his own life.

 

[6] A memoir detailing his encounters with Palestinian fighters and Black Panthers was published posthumously; see Un captif amoureux (Gallimard, 1986). Translated into English by Barbara Bray and with an introduction by Edmund White, it was published by Picador as The Prisoner of Love (1989).      

 

[7] The English translation of Derrida's book, by John P. Leavey, Jr. and Richard Rand, was published by the University of Nebraska Press, in 1986. A more recent translation, by Geoffrey Bennington and David Wills, was published with the title Clang by the University of Minnesota Press in 2021. 

 

[8] This Le Monde piece can be found in Jean Genet, The Declared Enemy: Texts and Interviews, ed. Albert Dichy, trans. Jeff Fort (Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 171-177. 

      According to the blurb for this book, Genet affirms a heroic politics of protest and revolt with "an uncompromising outrage". In other words, it's that depressing mix of militant asceticism and pathological narcissism that I genuinely despise. In fact, the only thing I hate Genet for more is his reported sexual abuse of the eleven-year-old daughter of his friend and fellow writer Monique Lange. Viewers interested in knowing more about this should see the unconventional docu-drama Little Girl Blue (2023), written and directed by Mona Achache, and starring Marion Cottilard: click here to watch the trailer.

 

[9] This wonderful description of McLaren and company was coined by Peter York in an article entitled 'Them' which appeared in Harpers & Queen (October 1976). It was quoted by Paul Gorman in The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren (Constable, 2020), p. 329. 

 

[10] Click here to watch the trailer to The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (dir. Julien Temple, 1980); the film that incriminates its audience. The narrator is the famous BBC newsreader John Snagge.

 

[11] Of all the Sex Pistols, I think it would have been guitarist Steve Jones whom the Frenchman would have found the most appealing. For as Glen Matlock once rightly observed, it was Jones who was the true spirit of the band and "like a character out of Jean Genet book [...] a real livewire scoundrel, unabashedly so".   

      Matlock was speaking in an interview with Matt Catchpole; see 'Trigger Happy - Sex Pistol Glen Matlock on Life as a Solo Performer and New Album Good To Go' (26 June, 2018): click here. Matlock later repeats this observation in an interview with Dave Steinfeld; see  'Glen Matlock - Truth or Consequences: Talking with the original Sex Pistol about politics and punk rock', on the website Rock and Roll Globe (18 May 2023): click here. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on Joe Orton, click here. 

  

Musical bonus: Sex Pistols, 'L'Anarchie Pour Le UK', from the album The Great Rock n' Roll Swindle (Virgin Records, 1979), uploaded to YouTube by Universal Music Group: click here. The vocalist is Loius Brennon and he is backed by his merry band of street musicians on accordian and fiddle.