Of all the great female-fronted bands that punk produced – Siouxsie, Slits, Raincoats, Delta 5, Kleenex – the most confrontational were the Au Pairs. They were also my favourites.

I’d happily argue that their debut album, Playing With A Different Sex, was then and is now one of the pinnacles of postpunk – one of the most important records of the era.

Formed in Birmingham in 1978, the Au Pairs’ sound – funky bass, stuttering drums and brittle, jagged guitars, matched by powerfully political lyrics – has much in common with Gang of Four.

With a balanced male-female line-up led by lesbian Lesley Woods (vocals, guitar), their songs had a fiery feminist agenda, putting sexual politics under an uncompromising microscope.

Not just sexual politics though: Armagh addressed the then-ongoing Troubles with its angry chorus “We don’t torture – we’re a civilised nation” delivered in typically detached tones.

Woods often employed call and response vocals with Paul Foad (lead guitar) to underline the lyrics, while the outstanding rhythm duo of Jane Munro (bass) and Pete Hammond (drums) laid a bedrock for Foad’s searingly dissonant guitar solos.

They didn’t last long: by 1983 Woods had endured enough of the hostility and violence faced by women in the music biz and, after a short spell with an all-female band called The Darlings in the late ’80s, retrained as a barrister specialising in immigration law.

Today she works from an office around the corner from where I remember seeing one of their most memorable gigs at Chats Palace in Homerton.

This is their first single Diet (backed with the equally great It’s Obvious) whose lyrics set out the agenda for their message:

“He works the car
She the sink
She’s not here
To think
Sits with the paper
Discuss the news
She doesn’t have
Political views…

She doesn’t have
Any views”