//Suit jacket + tie: Mark Powell; tab collared polka dot shirt Simon James Cathcart//

Get your Barney Bubbles Button badge set from the Barney Bubbles online shop.

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Tags: Generation X, John Cooper Clarke, Johnny Moped, Mark Powell, Punch The Clock, Simon James Cathcart, Vinyl Factory

//Interior, 430 King’s Road, west London, designed by Patrick Casey and Malcolm McLaren for the retail outlet Let It Rock and photographed by David Parkinson in January 1972. No reproduction without permission//

I have elected the above image for inclusion in the exhibition 111 Inspirational Interiors, which opens tomorrow in the Windows Gallery 1 at Central Saint Martins in Kings Cross, north London.

The show is curated by designer Ben Kelly in his role as chair of interior and spatial design at University of the Arts London as part of his project Popular Culture And The Interior; the 1972 David Parkinson photograph stems from my participation in Kelly’s ICA symposium last year, Dead Or Alive – Interior Design.

For the exhibition, Kelly invited 111 people to contribute “an image of an interior that has been important and influential in their creative and intellectual development”. The image I chose was taken on the completion of the refurbishment of the ground floor of 430 King’s Road  from the premises of boutique Paradise Garage into Teddy Boy culture emporium Let It Rock in late 1971 by the late Malcolm McLaren and his fellow former Harrow Art School student Patrick Casey.

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Tags: 111 Inspirational Interiors, Alice Rawsthorn, Ben Kelly, Catherine Ince, Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College Of Art, David Toop, Dinah Casson, Gavin Turk, Harrow Art School, Jeremy Till, John Cooper Clarke, John hegarty, Lucy McKenzie, Million Dollar Quartet, Patrick Casey, Peter Saville, Peter York, Screaming Lord Sutch, Sun Records, University Of The ARts London

Front cover, Innocents EP, 1977.

Chance encounters with heroes can be tricky, but bumping into John Cooper Clarke outside the Festival Hall late one evening last week proved pleasurable beyond all expectation.

Clarke looked the bomb, naturally in dark glasses as midnight approached, his frame draped in a coat worn across the shoulders gangster-style with white silk scarf hanging loose. Charm personified, he returned my compliments with words of praise with which I’m still coming to terms.

It hasn’t taken much to versify them into this lame appropriation of Clarke’s rat-a-tat style:

“I know your work,

I’ve got The Look,

I was first on our block with that book.”

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Tags: 1977, Evidently Chickentown, Innocents EP, John Cooper Clarke, Martin Hannett, Psycle Sluts Parts One & Two, Rabid Records, Salford Tech, So It Goes, Strawberry Studios, Tony Wilson