Jonny Rubbish - Living In NW3 4JR/ The Other Side

If one Johnny Rotten sometimes exaggerates and lies, but the parody of Johnny Rotten always tells the truth, which one is actually right wing?

Label: United Artists
Year of Release: 1978

Novelty takes on punk rock were all the rage within minutes of the scene becoming mainstream news. Given that one of the primary objectives of punk was that anyone could do it, the doorway was left wide open for amateur aspiring comedians and social commentators to feel they could parody it too - it doesn't take a stand-up comedian more than a day to learn how to play a few chords badly, after all, making the movement easy pickings for quick and cheap laughs.

Enter Jonny Rubbish stage left, or Jon Gatward as his family knew him. He was a "punk comic" who supported The Stranglers on tour, being canned and spat off stage while he stood around in a dustbin mocking the careers of John Lydon, Paul McCartney and The Bee Gees with slightly heavy-handed parodies of their styles.

Only two singles of his seem to have hit the record shops, this one - by far the superior effort in my opinion - and a festive parody of The Bee Gees called "Santa's Alive" which is so awful I'm surprised The Stranglers didn't garrotte him for it. Both 45s are blunt takes on dominant trends and topical issues, with some lines which veer close to student revue stylings and others which are unexpectedly funny. NW3 4JR refers to the area of Belsize Park Gardens in South Hampstead, an area much sought after by the cream of North London society, and the track opens with Rubbish sneering "I am a Capita-LIST!" It's completely impossible to ascertain whether he's talking about himself as a defined comedy character or mocking the idea that John Lydon was ever a bog-standard prole with the kids' best interests at heart, but the track continues with all the savagely conservative, aspirational gusto of a man who sincerely wishes to attain the status of Hampstead.

The production is incredibly on-the-money though, sounding gritty, distorted, grainy and strangely thrilling, reminding us that underneath the alleged Great Rock and Roll Swindle lay some bloody astounding material which would have sounded exciting in just about anybody's amateur hands, even a comedy man in a trashcan.

The B-side, on the other hand, is largely some very dodgy spoken-word nonsense about Rabbis going on strike which might have halfway worked in Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's hands, but here just sounds badly thought through at best.
There may be John Lydon fans out there who feel let-down and bewildered by his recent political opinions and feel that Jonny Rubbish might make a decent substitute for their stereograms given his fair impersonation. Those people will be equally disappointed to learn that Mr Punky Bin ended up becoming a Conservative Party councillor in Frinton-on-Sea in Essex. "I went from being a punk rock comedian to captain of Frinton Golf Club in five years, which is pretty good", he recently claimed proudly. Maybe he was singing about himself all along. Another smack in the eye for Dennis Healy indeed.

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