Released in October 1978, this was the song that showed The Jam had left their punk roots far behind. As did their third album, All Mod Cons, from which it was taken.

After making their name with amphetamine-fuelled R’n’B, Down In The Tube Station At Midnight took The Jam somewhere entirely different.

It showed Paul Weller to be a serious songwriter, an urban poet who could capture the desolate atmosphere of an Underground station at midnight, the wind-blown platform empty save for a few lost souls waiting for the last train home.

A scary place where a nice family man on his way home with a takeaway curry might encounter racist thugs intent on mindless violence: “Madmen on the rampage.”

Weller’s words bring tears to the eyes as he relates (in first person) the thoughts of the victim heading home to his wife: “She’ll be lining up the cutlery / I know she’s expecting me / Polishing the glasses / And pulling out the cork.”

You can see and almost smell the hateful aggressors: “They smelt of pubs / And Wormwood Scrubs / And too many right-wing meetings.”

It’s the best lyric he ever wrote… though the “disturbing nature” of those lyrics – and its graphic description of far-right “Paki-bashing” – earned it a ban from BBC radio.

And in a spectacular example of missing the point, Tony Blackburn, at the time a DJ on Radio 1, complained that “It’s disgusting the way punks sing about violence – why can’t they sing about flowers and trees?”