Wilko lives!

Great interview with Wilko Johnson in Saturday's Guardian. Alexis Petridis visits Wilko at his Southend home and his piece gives a fine account of Wilko's upgrading to greatest living Essexman after Julien Temple's film Oil City Confidential, his uplifting attitude to impending death and then the miraculous operation that has left him very much alive. Or as Wilko puts it: "Bloody hell man, I'm supposed to be dead!" Though bizarrely, Wilko's periods of depression lifted when he was under a death sentence, but have returned now he's recovered. Made me want to listen again to Wilko's excellent 'farewell' album with Roger Daltrey Going Back Home. The other good news is that Julien Temple has made a film, The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson, in cinemas from July 17, in which he compares the Canvey Island philosopher to both William Blake and a medieval saint, as you do.