I always had mixed feelings about The Stranglers. For all their ubiquity, there was an abiding sense that they were basically a bunch of old fellers who’d been playing on the pub circuit for years and jumped on the punk bandwagon.

That was kinda true but they did it at the very start and they weren’t alone there. I liked the music though.

The Doors-referencing psychedelic keyboards of Dave Greenfield lent them a layer of musicianship that was absent from most of their peers, while Jean-Jacques Burnel’s throbbing basslines and threatening persona provided another USP.

My suspicions were confirmed by Jet Black, who had drummed in bands as far back as the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he went into business instead.

More than twice the age of some of his contemporaries, he was pushing 40 and running an off-licence in Guildford when The Stranglers got together, with a sideline operating a fleet of ice-cream vans.

Also, I never fully forgave Hugh Cornwell for spraying me with sputum at the front of the Roundhouse stage the first time I saw them (supporting Patti Smith in 1976) when he performed his idiotic self-strangling / mock-masturbation act.

Here they are taking the piss as they perform their fourth and final single of 1977, the title track of their second album No More Heroes, Burnel badly miming Cornwell’s vocals before bashing the Christmas decorations to a pulp.

Black, looking every day of his age, turns his back half-way through and drums thin air instead, and Cornwell uses the guitar solo to do impressions of Jimi Hendrix and Pete Townshend.

Greenfield, conversely, declines to join in with such childish behaviour, playing exactly the right notes in exactly the right order to confirm his reputation as a consummate professional.

The song, of course, would gain a second life when Elastica purloined it in 1995 for their song Waking Up – a bit of borrowing that cost them a pretty penny in out of court settlement.