Dave, I hadn’t seen for about 15 years, but when we were playing Bristol last year he walked into the dressing room and went, ‘All right, Wendy?’” She laughs throatily. “It was so nice. When you’ve gone through so much with a gang of friends, it really doesn’t matter how many years go by. It has been the most incredible month of UK shows, press, radio, rehearsals, laughs, love, challenges, triumphs, musical triumphs and moments with you: The Fans of my music, old and new, who have just kept on, kept on being with me, toe to toe, every step of the way! These are undoubtedly collectors items and of value… especially so as they will never be re-produced.

I can’t remember what journalists have said bad things about me – it goes in one ear and out the other. I just do what I do and I concentrate on myself.”DO what they SAY they’re going to do. And I could not be more happy, more proud, more optimistic than I am now! It’s not a ‘hello boys’ pose. I’m not looking at the camera or inviting anybody in. There’s not a single man on the planet that can judge me for anything. Their opinion literally doesn’t count.” Unlike some of her peers, James was unapologetically ambitious, which must have been rather unfashionable, let alone un-English. Thank you to Amanda in Scotland, Jules in Ramsgate, Ben and Cal in London, Bernie in London… Thank you to Ricardo who travelled to UK and took incredible Live shots and always takes the most beautiful photos of me! That philosophy’s come too late for James’ stash of Transvision Vamp paraphernalia, which she metaphorically burned to a cinder.

If you buy the 7” Vinyl now with the official T-shirt featuring LP art, you can have them both signed by Wendy in time to mail out on She continues: “I’ll tell you one thing that does irritate me – it’s when girls pout into the camera with the latest designer clothes on, and that’s their album cover. There’s something about Downtown, with the artists, revolutionaries, activism, Max’s Kansas City, Patti and Lenny, the traffic lights, street signs, the rundown tenements… oh god. I could just eat it every single day.” As she told Michael Aspel on Aspel & Co in 1999: “I started thinking as though I had created myself.” It brings to mind the magpie eye Patti Smith describes in her memoir, Just Kids: of being young and hungry, and constructing the self out of little ideas thieved from here and there. I’m good friends with Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads, who knew the Bowery when it was a rat-infested danger zone,” she swoons.This is the first front cover I ever did. Photographed by legendary David Bailey and styled by an icon of the fashion world, Isabella Blow. I think it looks amazing too! James voice and delivery has changed, it can still be bitter sweet, almost childlike, it can be snarling and deliver menace and lyrically this sweetness can hide a barb and many different levels of message, anywhere to the direct brutal truth downwards. What James also achieves is to make a cohesive record even though each song is so different to each other. The variety is such that I could break down and talk about every song on this album but times dictates you will have to discover them for yourself. If I’d had a boyfriend who was fussing around me, maybe I would have dwelled on it, but I was surrounded by people who said, ‘They can go f*** themselves.’ Ever the escape artist, James left home on her 16th birthday and moved to Brighton, where she saw her first gig – The Clash – and decided she needed to carry on the good work of Joe Strummer.