Anybody who’s ever been even peripherally associated with any news event knows that most journalists start with a story and then find a few facts to fit it. Going home from the tragedy of the Poll Tax March years back and watching London local news utterly fail to put the brutalised demonstrators’ side of the story has left me with an eternal suspicion of mass media, and the long held desire to one day press Guy Michelmore’s lieing strawberry face against a hot iron. And at the other end of the spectrum of world importance, while as a comedy performer you expect a slagging sometimes, me and Rich Herring once had our live show unfavourably reviewed by a journalist from Select who wasn’t even there. But I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed a greater gulf between public experience and press representation than in the media fall-out from The Sex Pistols reunion at Finsbury Park.

Rat-faced Tony Parsons and his post-modern friends have been queueing up for weeks now to be the first to lob a wry grenade of life-hating smugness over the front-line of popular culture and spoil everyone’s fun at the old punks’ return. Accepted late night BBC2/Channel 4 Arts show critical dogma as regards the event was as follows; it’s sad; it’s not what punk is about; they couldn’t play then and they won’t be able to now; the place will be full of fat forty-year olds who’ve polished up their safety pins; the best we can do is go along and laugh at how rubbish they’ll be; only clever people like us will be able to understand the full cultural implications; repeat ad infinitum until time for interview with Booker Prize novelist and joke copied off “Fast Show” etcetera etcetera. It’s no surprise that most of these opinions were expressed by journalists who’ve made a career out of being survivors of the punk wars, and jealously guard their right to comment on a movement that they feel the rest of us are too young, or too old, or too middle class, or too over-educated, or too stupid (delete as applicable) to be entitled to an opinion on. The fact that the actual events of the day defeated and made irrelevant all their expectations didn’t stop them from sticking to their original story. The Sex Pistols were fantastic at Finsbury Park, and anyone who says they weren’t is a curmudgeonly twat, although you wouldn’t know it to read the reviews.

For the average music fan, the fact that the Sex Pistols had reformed at all was enough. When the reunited Velvet Underground played at Wembley three years back they had their moments, but weren’t spectacular. That said, there was hardly a dry eye in the house as they waved us goodbye and the heartfelt applause wasn’t so much a thankyou for the sometimes disappointing previous two hours, but a sincere and belated gesture of gratitude for a five year burst of creativity nearly three decades ago that went unrecognised and misunderstood at the time. The opportunity to do the same for the Sex Pistols, however “sad” they might prove to be, was all we wanted.
And so we gathered. “Aging punk rockers, squeezed into their gear.”, said The Guardian. “A sorry lot,” said The Independent, “thousands of those aging pun ks you see loitering around Baker Street Tube posing for pictures with Japanese Tourists for a quid a go.” Now, maybe I am mad, but I can honestly say that neither me nor any of the twelve people I was with saw anyone like that all day. The crowd was a catholic mix of tiny children with their Mums and Dads, people like me who were to young to join in the first time, and old fans from the past, none of whom looked like picture postcard punks. The Independent managed to snap a picture of a fat, fortysomething man with a mohican on a mobile phone to back up their article, but I bet the cameraman must have leapt for joy when he saw him, knowing it would be free drinks from the picture editor.

Before the Pistols came on, strangers chatted to each other in an atmsophere of unprecedented good humour, and laughed, preparing themselves for the worst, but still out to enjoy themselves, a concept alien to cultural commentators. But within seconds of the band taking the stage it was obvious nobody was going to have to try to make the best of it. There was no need. From where we were standing, about 20 000 people back and not in the hospitality area, The Sex Pistols played great, and they knew it. The crowd’s relief, that the band weren’t awful, soon became a euphoria, as no-one could believe quite how good they were. No, The Independent, thousands of people weren’t dancing and singing along and shouting to “an underwhelming experience similar to seeing a famous and much photographed building up close for the first time”. They just liked it. It wasn’t some kind of elaborate, ironic response by the group mind. The evening Standard reviewer even said that there was a steady rain of plastic and cans. But listen; there just wasn’t a steady rain of plastic and cans, right?. There were about 8 in 80 minutes. And 30, 000 people going mad. “What use is a mellowed out John Lydon?”, asked the Guardian. More use than an embittered journalist is the correct answer.
Never trust anyone who writes for a magazine. Unless it’s me.
The Pistols encored with Iggy Pop’s “No Fun”. No fun is exactly what inteligencia-central had willed this day to be, and so they tried to make it no fun for all of us inspite of ourselves. Well done, The Sex Pistols. Now quit again while you’re finally ahead. The Independent said Johnny was “gloating over selling people short”. Funny, that. We all had the feeling we’d been treated.

Stewart Lee’s friend Richard Herring is writing a play about going to the gig called “Punk’s Not Dead”. It’s Edinburgh Preview is on at the BAC 22nd-25th, 28th – 29th July.