Anarchy... sponsored by BT

The Sex Pistols have been playing at the Isle of Wight festival. Why?? I’m watching it on the television, which seems the sensible thing to do (because I’m pretty sensible these days). They’re playing Pretty Vacant. Four fat, fiftyish geezers singing a young men’s song. To people who weren’t born when they did it the first time round. There’s something very wrong about this. I’d be taking myself far too seriously if I used the word sacrilegious. So I’ll use the word ‘irrelevant’ instead. John Lydon is not Johnny Rotten. To his credit, he doesn’t pretend to be. When he talks sweetly to the interviewer about getting nervous before he goes on stage and wanting to put on a good show, I know it’s not the same person. When he says they are there to have a laugh I wonder whether, actually, he is. That’s ‘having a laugh’ as in ‘taking the ****ing piss’.