The other night I played the guitar with Alan Clayson at a pub gig in Tooting. Last month I accompanied him at the Komedia in Brighton. Normally he has Dick Taylor backing him but Dick's busy with the Pretty Things at the moment, so I stepped in as the sole member of the Alan Clayson Orchestra. I feel like Jools Holland - no, only joking…. One of my first ever mentions in the British music press was in a live review of Clayson & the Argonauts in the Melody Maker in 1976 . Allan Jones wrote - "Clayson occupies a premier position on rock's lunatic fringe alongside Wreckless Eric". I don't know where to begin in describing the Clayson phenomena. He came out of Reading University in the early seventies with a history degree, formed Clayson & the Argonauts and confused audiences up and down the country with a mix of historic odyssey and kitsch rock'n'roll. Their first single was a cover of The Taster by Wild Man Fischer. Unfortunately the band didn't share Alan's unique vision - they wanted to rock out, so after an hour of, in their view, slowly alienating the audience they'd finish with a version of Route 66 in an attempt to placate them. The band were straight, Alan wasn't.

I met Clayson for the first time in 1986 when I was in the Len Bright Combo. Bruce and I recorded some tracks with him but it came to nothing. He was working as a music teacher in a primary school at the time and had just published his first book, Call Up The Groups, The Golden Age Of British Beat. Since then he's become a full time writer with something like twelve or thirteen books to his name. His writing has been an inspiration to me. Where he excels is in documenting the minutiae of the provincial England we grew up in:

Authority, complaining of noise from this "Teddy Boys gala" abruptly terminated the set after twenty minutes of wrong notes, meandering tempos and long pauses between numbers which included I'm Into Something Good (twice), and a Concrete and Clay in which Beatle-fringed Kevin, forgetting the words, mumbled vaguely about "candy in the moonlight". Nevertheless, I filed out of the classroom in a daze. That the E-Types had approximated Number One hits placed them beyond criticism. Surely it was only a matter of a year at most before they "made it"…. READY STEADY GO…. TOP OF THE POPS…. SUNDAY NIGHT AT THE LONDON PALLADIUM…. MADISON SQUARE GARDEN. Imagine the laugh-a-minute recording sessions: the limousine gliding to the sold-out theatre; changing into stage gear fresh from Carnaby Street; David Jacobs announcing you in his BBC voice; everybody screams; wild scenes on the boards and off; police cordons; adoring girls; envious boys; hanging about the Scotch Of St. James with all the other stars.

What would be the E-Types angle? The Stones and Beatles were deadly enemies - everyone knew that. Gerry grinned Freddie was Clown Prince. Dave Berry was weird. The Merseybeats had frilly shirts. Manfred had a beard. Them were Irish. The Joystrings were religious. The Who smashed up their equipment. Kevin would think of something.

The gig went fine - in fact I think it was one of his good ones. There was the usual collection of misfits and weirdos that you come to associate with a Clayson event. They come with autograph albums and copies of his books on sixties music into which he inscribes florid dedications ; "to my deeply intimate personal friend Raymond, with best wishes from Alan Clayson…" - that sort of thing. God knows what they make of the performance that follows. Last night he started with the story of a man who was obsessed with the Dave Clark Five, and filled his house with memorabilia. When his wife was finally driven out of his life by the enormity of his obsession he apparently said, "I can always find another woman, but some of these records are priceless". I can well believe it - I once met the man in a shabby hotel at the Elephant & Castle, at a Dave Clark Five convention which Clayson had taken me along to as a treat back in 1986. The man's wife told me that they had Dave Clark Five weekends - he'd get dressed up in the gear and play all the records.

"Well," I said, "that's Saturday morning taken care of, but what do you do then?" How naïve. It seems that when you take into account the Austrian pressing of "Bits And Pieces" with the slightly different B side, and the South African "Everybody Knows" which has a change to the lyric in the third line of the second verse, the Urdu "Glad All Over", and you've got all these records to get through, you're looking at a tightly packed weekend. And when you consider the photo montage of the Dave Clark SIX which adorned their mantelpiece - the Five on the cover of their first album with our middle-aged friend in matching Beatle drape edited in, "tightly packed" is probably about right. It seems he went round the twist in the end, but not before making a vow to collect every record on the same label as the Dave Clark Five. As this was EMI I can imagine that his wife had to leave him because there quite simply wasn't enough space left for her.

Before the gig Alan told me another tale of disquieting fan-life: Some time ago while he was in Chicago he gave his address, phone number and an invitation of the "if you're ever in England…" kind to a fan who he'd got on with quite well. The other day he got a phone call - not from the fan himself, but from some friends of his who'd been assured that they'd receive a warm welcome should they look him up. They were a couple in their seventies who ran a boarding house in Illinois in which George Harrison had once stayed. Afterwards they re-named the hotel "A Hard Day's Night" in his honour, and became Beatle anoraks. Unfortunately for Clayson he once wrote a book about George Harrison, and although he's never met him, he lives near the Harrison mansion in deepest Berkshire. Anyone else would've at least lied there way out of this potentially disasterous situation - I would've said I was doing the night shift at the Cadbury's factory, visiting a sick cousin, anything… But Clayson's too polite, so he autographed the book, and endured a tortuous and horribly embarrassing afternoon of sight-seeing, gawping and photo-taking outside the Harrison pile, followed by a tedious evening in a restaurant with two people he had nothing to say to; and when it was too late to get a hotel, and the last train was about to pull out, the old couple intimated that they'd like to stay the night…

The gig in Rugby was a bit of a laugh. The Regency turned out to be an old working mens club - it took me back to the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds last year except that, whereas in Leeds I shared the dressing room with a Bingo machine, I couldn't find one anywhere in the Regency Club. Rugby is obviously a much more progressive place. The gig was a benefit for the Firemen's Benevelent Fund. It was organised by a fireman called Steve Roberts. Steve told us that TV programme, London's Burning, is nothing like it, and also they don't slide down the fireman's pole because they're usually on the ground floor anyway. I was sadly disillusioned especially as I thought we'd raised a pole that the firemen could've been proud of. I was very pleased to hear afterwards that two rather straight looking people, who arrived much earlier than everyone else, walked out and asked for their money back because they weren't used to hearing so much obscene language at a charity event. Well, fuck 'em - they know different now. I'd like to thank Steve for putting it on and doing such a great job, and also for the curry. He does great Indian food. Hopefully we'll be back in Rugby quite soon.

I'd like to say a big "hi, hello there!" to all those lovely people who turned up in Whitstable last month, but that'd make me sound like some crappy radio presenter, so I'm not going to. But talking about radio presenters - well, more like DJ, and definitely not crappy…

- did anybody go to the Mayday demonstration? We did but only just I'm afraid. It happened to coincide with Annie Nightingale collecting her MBE at Buckingham Palace. Being Annie she managed to put a brilliant twist on it. We were invited to a Mayday party "to celebrate the storming of the Palace" at a club in Little Portland Street - just round the corner from Oxford Circus. By way of a clue as to exactly why she was throwing a party the invitation carried the cryptic message "Mmm… Be… Ecstatic…" We got there by a circuitous route because they kept closing down tube stations. When we went in, the do hadn't really got going, Annie hadn't arrived yet, and the bar was full of Primal Scream. We felt bad about not being in the demonstration - we were letting ourselves down by not getting involved, so off we went. On the way out we met Annie coming in and said we'd be back later. There were riot police everywhere - shields, visers, batons, padded boiler-suits - and that was just the horses. We got down Great Portland Street and almost onto Oxford Street before we were driven back by by police on horseback. They come galloping up, big animals on big animals, and you have no choice - you either run or get trampled. Most people were very cool, there was little provocation that I saw. The police seemed to be making all the running, closing off the side streets and funnelling everyone into the main strrets leading away from Oxford Circus. Those mounted polce have really worked on their image - it's designed to instill fear, and I think it's modelled on the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. They're large, silent and brutal. The on-foot riot police, on the other hand are anything but silent, as we found out when we got involved in a baton charge. They screamed as they ran whacking at us with their batons as we tried to get out of their way - again you have no choice. This is grossly intimidating behaviour on the part of the forces of law and order, and it's only going to get worse. Perhaps next year we should all make a date to meet up at the anti-capitalist demonstrations, I think it's the least we can do. In case anyone isn't sure who the forces of law and order are in our country here's a picture of our deputy prime minister, John Prescott:

John Brown came over from Wales and we've been recording for the last three days. We've managed a new version of Kilburn Lane which originally appeared on 12 O'Clock Stereo. I always thought that version was lacking, so I don't think anyone will mind that I've done it again. As it didn't sell in huge quantities I suppose most people won't even know - so that's alright. We also put down a new number called Lady Power. We went through a phase last year of starting the set with it - if anyone was listening. I know we did at the Lift in Brighton, and at Gaz's in London.

It looks like Mark Lamarr is going to have to part with his bone marrow. A couple of months back I made my Radio 2 debut on the Mark Lamarr Standing In For Jonathan Ross On Saturday Morning Show, or whatever it's called. I've already achieved a Radio 4 debut on Pillories Of The State last January. I've only got to get on Radio 3 and I'll have collected the set. I mentioned this on Mark's programme and he bet his bone marrow I couldn't do it. Two weeks later Andy Kershaw went on the Lamarr show having broadcast his first Radio 3 programme the night before. He'd started with Blitzkrieg Bop by the Ramones, and the second record he played was Reconnez Cherie. Mark said it didn't count because I wasn't actually there myself. Good try Mark, but Kershaw's just asked us to do a session.

We just repaired the drains. The bloke upstairs is a complete fuckwit. He's an actor - I think the word actor is just an abbreviation of completely imbecilically fucking stupid. We told him, explained it all to him, that we were going to repair the drain-pipes but he still managed to cover us in shaving water, the cunt. I had to go upstairs and just about present him with a script - I felt like a bleeding Italian Film Director. Don't run any water in your second bathroom until tomorrow because we're repairing the drain-pipes (you shite faced piece of festering thespian dogshit) I said. Er - yeah, aha hmmm... I think I've got that - could we just take it from where I pull the plug out....