If you weren’t there last night why not? You missed an ace night. I was playing at the monthly Filthy Little Clubnight at The Castle in Manchester.

With two bands over from Liverpool, Awesome Wells and Town Bike, it was good to see a good contingent of fans had followed them over. Both bands dealt in carefree punk-influenced pop in the Kenickie mould (no bad thing in my book!) and both had songs about celebrities (Dannii Minogue and Dougie from McFly, if you’re wondering). Oh, and Town Bike had uniforms - proper bespoke ones unlike the shop-bought jacket I wear on stage. I was impressed!

How I’ve managed to miss Billy Ruffian so far, I don’t know. I’d go as far as to say that they’re the most fun live band from Manchester at the moment. Seriously - you should go see them ASAP. They win extra points from me for the blog post they published yesterday which described me as “Trent Reznor singing the songs of Grandmaster Flash shimmying with Shergar on on speed!”. I fully intend to include that quote next time I re-write my biog.

As for me, I had a great time during my set. At a couple of points I suffered what’s known as ‘James Dean Bradfield-itis’ where I forgot a couple of lyrics. This was made worse by the fact that a some people were singing along! The songs from the new EP went down well and all in all I’m itching to book loads more gigs. I chickened out of wearing a clown mask on stage though, although that does feature in the upcoming video for ‘My Little Test Case’. More news on that soon!

Finally, I felt I had to share this with you. It’s Awesome Wells’ unhappy cat mascot, or ‘mascat’ if you will.