He was just the brother of a teacher at the girls’ school across the road.

So obviously we assumed his band would be rubbish. I could have gone to see them play countless times in local pubs but Miss Rowland’s brother? Nah. Of course, a few months later when this fantastic record was No.1, I was suddenly their biggest fan, claiming to have been at all those early pub gigs. Then that admiration became genuine. Kevin Rowland is a proper eccentric, erratic one-off with that inability, typical of our backgrounds, to handle fame or fortune. Tonight I’m off to see a screening of Nowhere is Home, a film all about Kevin with my great friend Brian Jones. Brian was a Dexy’s fan from the start. But then he immediately saw a true musical genius. He didn’t see the brother of a teacher from the school across the road.