I centred my life around songwriting with Len. That’s what had kept me going through those dark months after the attack, travelling every day from Brixton to his home in a tower block in Deptford. We were very disciplined, setting ourselves targets. We had to write a song every day, and we would make ourselves nish it even if it wasn’t good. Len originally came from Teesside, and started off on the music scene of the mid-1980s as a jazz guitar player, playing in quartets, when the jazz/soul sound was popular, capturing people’s imaginations with films like Absolute Beginners and musicians like Courtney Pine and Sade. By the time we started working together in 1990, the sound had morphed into the funkier style of acid jazz. We had traces of that in our early songs, but were soon experimenting with different sounds.

To my mind, it also stands out because it was mixed by the great Andy Wallace. We were obsessed with every record he mixed or produced. He was our idol. How did lil’ ole Skunk get to work with such an American legend? This was the man who had mixed Run DMC’s Raising Hell and Nirvana’s album Nevermind. Quite simply, Leigh did it. Years before, when she was starting out in the industry, working for the Rolling Stones’ booking agents, Leigh had spotted Andy’s home address on the office's Rolodex and had copied it down. When we got our first record deal, every time we had a gig she would send him a flyer, even though she knew he probably wouldn’t come. This was a piece of genius foresight because he later told us how it had sparked his curiosity. ‘I kept getting these red flyers from this English band that looked cool,’ he said, so by the time we had an American record deal, he took the meeting. He wanted to be involved, so that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

It was the song that was playing when I had my sudden moment of clarity in South Shields. Ever since I was a kid, I’d dreamed of being a musician. Those dreams had taken many forms: sometimes I was Little Richard, sometimes Jerry Lee Lewis, sometimes Ray Charles. But whatever form they had taken, none of them had involved standing onstage in a supper club outside of Newcastle, not playing a Vox Continental organ, while Long John Baldry alternately crooned to the accompaniment of a tape recorder and angrily threatened to fine members of the audience fifty pounds. And yet, here I was. Much as I loved John, I had to do something else.

People talk about Derek And The Dominos being a real disaster area, strung out on heroin and booze, but you would never have known that if you’d seen them live that autumn. They were phenomenal. From the side of the stage, I took mental notes about their performance. Eric Clapton was the star, but it was their keyboard player, Bobby Whitlock, that I watched like a hawk. He was from Memphis, learned his craft hanging around Stax Studios and played with that soulful, Deep Southern gospel feel. Touring with them or Leon was like being on the road with Patti LaBelle or Major Lance when I was in Bluesology: you watched and you learned, from people who had more experience than you.

I’ve been a professional musician for my entire adult life, but I’ve never got bored with playing live. Even when I thought I had – when I was playing the cabaret circuit with Long John Baldry, or in the mid-seventies, when I was just exhausted – I obviously hadn’t. You could tell by the way I would grandly announce my retirement, then end up back onstage weeks later. Throughout my life that feeling I get before I go on each night, the mix of adrenalin and anxiety, has never changed, and thank God it hasn’t, because that feeling is fucking great. It’s addictive. You might get sick of the travelling, the promotion, all the stuff that surrounds playing live, but that feeling will always keep you coming back for more.