Pete Wylie had his finest moment – and biggest hit – when Wah! released The Story Of The Blues at Christmas 1982, and reached No.3 in the charts.

If Manchester was the epicentre of post-punk at the end of the Seventies, for me it had moved to Liverpool by the dawn of the Eighties.

First came Buzzcocks, Joy Division and The Fall and then, as if by osmosis, it all moved a few miles west and we got the Teardrops, the Bunnymen and, my favourites, Wah! Heat.

That’s the name Pete Wylie used for his band at the beginning, putting out two of the greatest singles of all time in Better Scream and Seven Minutes To Midnight.

Soon they slimmed down to Wah! (releasing Somesay), then beefed up again to Shambeko Say Wah! (for Remember and Hope) and would soon become The Mighty Wah! (with Come Back).

At other points they became JF Wah! and Wah! The Mongrel, and for their last great single (Sinful) they became Pete Wylie and Oedipus Wrecks.

In between, they reverted to their monosyllable to make this epic, the apotheosis of Wylie’s seemingly effortless ability to write and sing epic tunes.

Not only that, but to match them to the perfect backing: whether it’s clanging guitars and thunderous drums or, as here, a string section and choir.

It always puzzled and disappointed me – and, I’m sure, him – that Wylie, who wrote and performed half a dozen of the decade’s best songs, did not become the biggest pop star of the Eighties.

It was clear from his persona that he already thought he was, even back in the Seventies when he was fighting for supremacy with the competing egos of Ian McCulloch and Julian Cope in the mythical Liverpool supergroup-that-never-was The Crucial Three.

He should have been; there’s a story that he once fell and broke his back and when the emergency services arrived and asked him his name he replied: “You should know my fucking name!”

And this should have gone even higher than No.3 in the charts. Here’s the full version, complete with Wylie’s impassioned social commentary monologue from the B-side.

It doesn’t get much better than this.