When I was in the Sixth Form at school in Essex in the mid ‘sixties everyone could play the guitar or drums and was in a band, or “group”.

Actually, for “everyone”, read “boys” and for “could”, read “thought they could”. Dave, Oscar and I, with a series of drummers, had a moderate success around the pubs, dives and holiday camps of south Essex, which lasted just long enough to distract us from our A-level studies.

One fellow pupil, however, put the rest of us very firmly in the shade: John Wilkinson actually could play the guitar, as demonstrated during impromptu lunchtime jam sessions. He was a good artist, took Shakespeare in his stride and, as we used to say in those days, was a nice bloke. He travelled in every day from a place called Canvey Island, where, we had it on good authority, dragons dwelt. Although we were in the same Eng. Lit. class for a while, and I think he leant me an amplifier once, we were never close friends and didn’t keep in touch. The last I remember, in the final hay-fever-filled weeks of our schooldays, was that he had been offered a job in Donovan’s backing band, which he declined, much to our amazement. We left school, I heard that he’d gone on the hippy trail to India then to university. I gave up the music business, due to the fact that the levels of drunkenness required in our audiences for them to tolerate us was becoming unsustainable, even in Essex, and a few years later I moved to Bristol.

Then, in the early ‘seventies, a band called Doctor Feelgood appeared, fronted by a robotic guitarist with a familiar lead and rhythm style: no longer John Wilkinson, now, of course, Wilko Johnson.

Well, all this preamble is because a friend told me on Sunday that Wilko has incurable pancreatic cancer. He has decided against chemotherapy but is doing a tour in March to thank all his fans.

BBC Front Row interview.