Wilko is Going Back Home

So Wilko Johnson has finally gone to the great Oil City above. As a teenager I loved reading about Dr Feelgood in Sounds, with the band described as dressing like "out-of-work accountants" and listening to the live album Stupidity in the era of Yes and Pink Floyd. And I  saw Wilko Johnson's Solid Senders play a great set while at Lancaster University in 1980. 

Then there was his revival with the film Oil City Confidential in which he showed us his telescope and described looking from Canvey at the flares from the refinery, which were like, "something out of Dante's Inferno." I saw Wilko play at Canvey Island and wrote about it in my book The Joy of Essex in 2012. Plus there was his memorable role as a mute executioner in Game of Thrones and his wonderfully philosophic attitude to having cancer. A great guitarist and true Essex eccentric, let's hope Wilko is now standing down by the jetty.