IF YOU’RE scared of flying and want to confront your fears head-on, do a round trip to the Shetland Islands when it’s blowing a gale.

The weekend before last my wife Robina and I did just that. The return journey was especially bumpy but in the end strangely exhilarating. The wonders of aerodynamics!

I was playing at a two-day music festival organised by the energetic Geoff Ampleford to celebrate his 50th birthday and 30 years organising gigs in the Shetland capital Lerwick.

Starting from the Sussex coast, it took longer to get there than it would to reach New York but it was well worth it.
Present were some of the friendliest — and, in some cases, some of the most pissed — people we have ever met, and that’s saying a lot.

Highlights were the utterly ska-tastic Bombskare and Randolph’s Leap from Glasgow, the latter sounding like a welcome hybrid of The Proclaimers and Dexys and the fiddle-crazed Mystery Juice.

And then Robina and I took the ferry over to Bressay and paid a visit to the lighthouse where her great-grandmother was born. A lovely weekend.

Young London director Farouq Suleiman and his crew have just finished a couple of days filming me in and around my port town home for a short documentary to coincide with my forthcoming autobiography and 35th anniversary as Attila. 

This culminated in a local gig last Monday at the Greys in Brighton alongside my old friend from Vancouver, klezmer-punk accordionist singer-songwriter Geoff Berner — a truly original Yiddisher performer if ever there was one.

Geoff is really funny, really clever — and really DARK. His song Lucky Goddamn Jew is stuck in my brain. “Got some food, got some booze, women who will sleep with me/I’m so lucky wandering round — scrounging off the bourgeoisie.”
That’s what I call satire and, if you’re in east London tomorrow, he’s playing the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club at 8pm and you’ll see exactly what I mean.

And now it gives me great pleasure to announce the release of Orgreave Justice, a double CD compilation put together by Tony from excellent socialist Barnsley punk band The Hurriers in collaboration with London activists Philosophy Football to raise funds for the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign.

It features an amazing line up of 33 radical bands, singer-songwriters and poets old and new — the absolute cream of modern radical music and the answer to the question so often posed in the mainstream media: “Where have all the radical performers gone?” We haven’t. You just choose to ignore us.

It is a fantastic achievement by those who put it together and is already my album of 2015. No favourites: I am mentioning the LOT. Here goes….

Paul Heaton, New Model Army, Blaggers ITA, Louise Distras, Steve Drewett, Billy Bragg, Sleaford Mods, Jon Langford, Chumbawamba, Grace Petrie, Chris T-T, Thee Concerned Citizens, Quiet Loner, Banner Theatre, Robb Johnson, TV Smith, Jethro Platts, The Black Lamps, Thee Faction, Tony Walsh, Blossoms, The Movement, Steve White & The Protest Family, Matt Abbott, Wilde Sammon, Cambodia, Terry and Dead, The Hurriers, Joe Solo, The Oppressed, Chris Evans Collective, Pitman Poet and Attila the Stockbroker.

Buy it from philosophyfootball.com and support a great cause!
Finally a word about Greece. Sorry, KKE. I was talking bollocks. You were right.