Is this the best punk single of all time? It’s certainly up there. When you throw in the equally anthemic B-side Bored Teenagers, it’s a match for first wave classics like Blitzkrieg Bop, (I’m) Stranded, New Rose, God Save The Queen, Orgasm Addict and Peaches.

The Adverts managed to combine pure punk attitude with pure pop sensibility, something few of the angry brigade managed – with a fe2 honourable exceptions like Buzzcocks and The Boys.

This is as fine an example as there ever was.
It actually cracked the Top 20 (reaching No.18) and earned them an appearance on Top of the Pops in September 1977, when TOTP was still pretty punk-o-phobic.

The song’s theme is macabre: it’s about someone who wakes up in hospital having been given an eye transplant.

The first thing he sees with his new ones is a news bulletin about the execution of a psycho killer called Gary Gilmore, who has donated his eyes to science.

To say he’s unhappy is an understatement but, as the song’s final lyric reminds us: “Gary don’t need his eyes to see – Gary and his eyes have parted company.”

Gilmore was a real-life double killer who made headlines for demanding that his execution, for two murders in Utah, be carried out against his lawyers’ wishes, and for donating his organs to science.

He was shot by a firing squad in January 1977 and in real life his corneas were transplanted to two different people.
Gilmore was immortalised in literature as well as music when Norman Mailer wrote The Executioner’s Song, published in 1979.