Undernourished post-war urchin
Bellicose on beer-stained stages
Quoit-lipped demon of the Sixties
Leering out from yellowed pages
Men who fought the war for your sort
Apoplectic, guarded daughters
Spat conscription, baths and haircuts
Then confined their sons to quarters
Women fell and men fell further
Clutching at the revolution
While the outlaws turned to in-laws
And the band to institution
Desperate press corps waiting gamely
Praying that time would do the dirty
Aching-limbed, kept rusty hatchets
Held aloft since you were thirty
Businessmen with half the know-how
Watched astonished from the city
Grudgingly in recognition
While the shekels swelled the kitty
Singers half your age stood sideways
And compared the washboard stomach
On your lupine taut-limbed torso
To their own emerging hummock
Somewhere in a London suburb
Peeling mildewed, on a wall
Legend has it, hangs a poster
For some long-demolished hall
Where a feisty five-piece outfit
Took the stand then moved along
Dartford boy, you showed them one thing:
It's the singer not the song.