I suppose you’d have to call Vic Godard another of the oddballs of punk, alongside the likes of Wreckless Eric, Johnny Moped, Kevin Rowland and Spizz.

Vic (real name John Napper) only got into music because he was an early fan of The Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren persuaded him to form a band to play alongside them at the 100 Club Punk Festival in 1976.

When they did, The Clash’s manager Bernie Rhodes liked them so much he gave them a support slot on the 1977 White Riot tour, where I first saw them (night after night).

Over the next year it became an unhappy marriage, culminating in Rhodes firing the entire band except Godard without explanation in the middle of recording their debut album.

The reasons have never become clear and it was never completed, or released. But this track, Ambition, was salvaged and came out as a single on Rough Trade in 1978, backed by the only other surviving track, Different Story.

The Sect’s much delayed debut album, What’s The Matter Boy? in 1980, was recorded with a different band, contained different songs and had a very different sound.

It was not a success and, after a dalliance with rockabilly, by the mid-80s Godard had left music to become a postman.

Since then he has returned to music sporadically over the years and only last year he released an album, produced by Mick Jones of The Clash.

I went to a “listening party” for it with Godard and Jones during lockdown, at an East London studio, and i remember being impressed, though I don’t recall it actually coming out.

Their early work, however, was peerless – and bore little relationship to most of the music put out under the punk label. The two Peel sessions, in 1977 and 1978, were particularly great, featuring songs I remember as if it were yesterday – Don’t Split It, Chainsmoking, Parallel Lines, Nobody’s Scared… and this.

And I now discover that in 2007, as Subway Sect, Godard recorded the songs that had been intended for that debut LP back in 1978 (with a line-up including original drummer Mark Laff and bassist Paul Myers), and released them under the title 1978 Now.

So I shall be going back to listen to that very soon. In the meantime…