It's amazing how many middle class people would like to have been dragged up in 'the hood' or have been ' Just Jenny from the block' or 'Conrad from the Dinks', okay that last one is a hypothetical one, I'm not sure The Dinks is real but you get the point. Well with some rah rahs it doesn't matter because they'd just make up that they had spent their formative years in some kitchen sink scheme.

There's a certain amount of kudos coming from the area I came from or if you were from anywhere on Merseyside or Clydeside. Trouble is these places do take in a lot of well to do areas as well as slums and many a time some kid has clearly 'Geordied it up' in front of his geographically ignorant pals in London and when they out him as a Geordie and I ask where he's from he says Morpeth or Gosforth in a Neil Tenant accent. Now these places do have their council estates but you can tell from his voice he never lived in nor frequented them, neither did he go to the local state school there.

Why aren't people proud, well not proud but at least comfortable with where they're from? I remember Gerry Halliwell saying in an interview 'I'm just a girl from Watford', we all come from a place love, give it a rest. My Mam reckons that in her day the first thing you wanted to do was get out of the coal driven, smoky cesspit that you were from and live in a faldy daldy place down south, flatten your vowels and deny you came from anywhere near the cradle of  the industrial revolution. She told me that lads from the forces came back with silly accents because it was a bit chic back then to talk like a twat. Funny how things change in living memory.

This sort of doesn't bring me on to last nights gig, if it did I would say and it doesn't. When I'm an old man (if I get that far) I'll probably bore people about the halcyon days of being on the road and doing gigs for crisp notes being bundled into my hands when no one's looking and then getting the hell out of there before angry locals tip my car over. In actual fact it's normally a BACS transfer or a previously agreed cheque to follow with my agent's comission off it and invariably the punters have gone home to watch I don't know Luther or Question Time on sky plus when I'm firing up my car and heading to the nearest motorway.

Last night was like going back to the old days in Glossop. I played an upstairs pub room to 60 people. Owen Rankin was the compere. I haven't seen him for about 10 years. He's a lovely feller and still has the enthusiasm and the funnyness. I went on early because one of the acts hadn't turned up yet. After I had finished it turned out that he wasn't coming at all so I did an encore. A great knock. I casually walked over to the car at the end and drove out of the picturesque Peak district town. It wasn't exactly like fighting a Mexican in Mexico or the Mexican quarter of Los Angeles if there is such a place, as I say research wastes time. I certainly wasn't like Johnny Owens against Lupe Pintor in 1980 wanting to get in there do well and then get the hell out. It was after all only Glossop not 'The Dinks'.

Right I'm in Nottingham and Loughborough tonight and then Nottingham tomorrow. Speak then.

TODAY'S BLOG IS SPONSORED BY THE WONDERFULLY TALENTED AND VERY POSH TONY HART. I BET HE DIDN'T PRETEND HE WAS FROM DOWNTOWN KINGSTON. 

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