| So
when did John Lydon audition for the Sex Pistols? It has been stated previously
that it was possibly Saturday 23th August. Paul Gorman, who was in The Roebuck
on the night it took place, re-examines the evidence and posits a different conclusion.
Paul
takes up the story exclusively for God Save The Sex Pistols: "I
recall it being close to the Bank Holiday weekend that year because I spent a
week around the holiday painting and decorating a flat with my brother off the
King's Road, travelling there via the 31 bus from north west London. On one of
those journeys I distinctly recall jumping off the bus to join some friends at
the Notting Hill Carnival. August 23rd-25th was the bank holiday weekend that
year. "But
was it Saturday 23rd, as previously conjectured? It seems so due to all the accounts
I've read but I recall meeting a friend of my brother's the next morning in Kensington
who commented on how hung-over we were. He was on his way to work so that can't
have been Sunday 24th (nothing opened on a Sunday in those days). "It
still feels to me like it was a weekday night, possibly Thursday 21st (because
it was, to me at least - remember I was just 15 years old - so naughty that all
these people didn't give a fuck about convention and were pissing it up well into
the night regardless of getting up in the morning and having a job to go to).
The 21st - according to my Letts diary from the time which I have in front of
me - was a Full Moon. "Now
wouldn't that be fitting?" Text
© Paul Gorman | 
