I have this record in my singles collection but I never played it much – and I have to admit I didn’t appreciate its significance as the first queer punk single.

Nor did I realise it’s the same tune – same recording, in fact – with different vocals and lyrics, as Plastic Bertrand’s punk pastiche Ça Plane Pour Moi,

In fact the song’s been around the block so much that it’s hard to remember where it started. But it began in 1977 with a band called Elton Motello.

It’s notable mostly for its transgressive lyric, written by the band’s singer, Alan Ward. It’s a first-person narrative about a 15-year-old boy in a sexual relationship with an older man (who then rejects him for a girl).

Released in October 1977, its theme ensured it didn’t get heard on the radio, though it enjoyed some popularity in Belgium, where Ward had enjoyed some success as a member of glam-punk band Bastard alongside Brian James, who would go on to find fame in The Damned

Muddying the waters further, the music on the single was not actually performed by Elton Motello but by a bunch of session men (guitarist Mike Butcher, bass guitarist John Valcke and drummer Bob Dartsch) with Ward on vocals.

And that might have been the end of it. Except… in the summer of 1978 a Belgian producer called Lou Deprijck remixed the backing track, wrote a new French lyric (leaving out the gay stuff), and gave it a new title – Ça Plane Pour Moi.

He then gave it to a fellow Belgian called Roger Jouet, endowing him with the stage name Plastic Bertrand. But Bertrand didn’t sing on the track at all – the vocals were by Deprijck himself.

So here you had: a song by a band who didn’t play on it, re-recorded by a bloke who didn’t sing it.

Confused? Well it got even more confusing when the song was also recorded in three different incarnations by Captain Sensible: first by King, a short-lived punk supergroup he formed when The Damned went on a brief hiatus, then by another blink-and-you-missed-’em band called The Softies – and finally, when they got back together, by The Damned themselves.

Anyway, back to the song. Narrated by the boy himself, the lyrics include lines about wanting to beat the older man to death, with the catchy pre-chorus hook: “He gives me head.” Which may explain why radio stations preferred to play the French version instead.

Ward went on to produce the second Plastic Bertrand album and continued to enjoy a successful production career in Belgium after making his mark as one of the few gay voices in punk.

He later reflected: “We have all been ripped off at some point in our lives but judging by the emails I receive, my lyric has touched many more people and seems to ring a chord in many more hearts than the French one will ever do. That’s why I wrote it.”