In the early days of punk I would often find myself arguing with friends who insisted punk was rubbish because the musicians couldn’t play and the singers couldn’t sing. In the case of Johnny Moped, they might have had a point. On both counts.

That was part of their appeal, though there was a certain virtuosity to the playing of guitarist Simon Fitzgerald (aka Slimy Toad), a man memorably described by Danny Baker as looking “as if God was intending to make a twin brother for Lemmy but ran out of materials halfway through.”

The most famous thing – two things? – about Johnny Moped is that both Captain Sensible and Chrissie Hynde passed through this otherwise unremarkable first-wave punk outfit as guitarists in their early days.

Formed in Croydon long before punk by Paul Halford (aka Johnny Moped), they started out as Johnny Moped and the 5 Arrogant Superstars before changing their name first to Assault and Buggery, then The Commercial Band, The Black Witch Climax Blues Band and Genetic Breakdown.

The first line-up featured Ray Burns (aka Captain Sensible) on guitar and he was replaced, briefly, by Chrissie Hynde, before she left to form The Pretenders and Halford changed the name back to Johnny Moped in January 1975.

Regulars at the Roxy in early 1977, I think I first saw them supporting The Damned, or possibly Eater, and in April that year on a bill with Buzzcocks, Wire and X-Ray Spex that was recorded for the Live At The Roxy WC2 sampler album, on which they performed Hard Lovin’ Man.

No One was their first single, on the Chiswick label, though it was the B-side, Incendiary Device (included in the second half of this clip), that caught the ear of John Peel, reaching no.15 in his Festive Fifty that year.

I still have the single, as well as the debut album Cycledelic, though I’m not sure how often I’ve played it – and certainly not for several decades – and the band, hampered by the hostility towards Moped’s music career shown by his wife and mother-in-law, broke up in 1978.

No One is a representative sample of the DIY racket they made but the highlight of their brief career was their second single, the novelty garage ballad Darling, Let’s Have Another Baby, which was made Single of the Week in all three music papers, NME, Sounds and Melody Maker.