'You’ve got the best of both worlds': Paul Cook on the Sex Pistols touring without John Lydon 

In advance of the Sex Pistols' Irish gig around the 50th anniversary of their first single, Paul Cook talks about the heady days of the punk explosion, and why he's happy to hit the road again 

Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols in a west London pub earlier this year. Picture: Richard Purden

I’m walking with Paul Cook through Shepherd’s Bush in West London. It was these very streets where he would meet his life-long friend and Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones as lads skipping school. It was also where he suffered an attack from six assailants with an iron bar at the height of the Pistols’ infamy in June 1977.

“I wasn’t a fighter and it was a dangerous place to be if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” the 69-year-old drummer explains. “I had a knack of walking into trouble and got badly beaten up not far from here by a bunch of Teddy Boys for looking like a punk. There was a reaction against the punks that was so far out there; we were public enemy number one and front-page news. A lot of it was caused by us, I must admit.”