The Pogues changed my life at the Glasgow Barrowland in December 1985. I was 14 years old. It was an 18-and-over gig, but I was tall for my age and this was Glasgow in the 1980s. Nobody gave a fuck.
I went with my mate, Billy. (Important background: Billy had been raised a Catholic but given a proddy name by his Protestant dad.) We were music nuts and John Peel devotees. When Peel played The Pogues' song The Old Main Drag on his show, the two of us talked excitedly about it on the school bus the next day – it was as exciting as when we saw Boys From The Black Stuff, or Tim Roth in Made In Britain, or Jamie Lee Curtis’s tits.
