For sure, the link to October 21st is tenuous, but Feargal has an August birthday so I needed to find something tenuous, because what a fascinating and varied life he has led.

Young TV delivery lad, joined his cousin Billy’s band, write a pop-punk icon adored by John Peel so much that he played it twice, back-to-back on the radio, which is something your best mate does, rather than a radio DJ. Peel would eventually call it his favourite song of all time and have its open lyric is engraved on his headstone.

“Are teenage dreams so hard to beat?”

That would be enough for a slide alone, but what followed was a solo career, including a number 1 single, then a switch to the business side as an A&R man for Polydor, exec at The Radio Authority and CEO of UK Music where he set up their political lobbying arm.

As if that weren’t enough, since leaving UK music he has turned his skill in captivating an audience and lobbying governments to his pet passion for UK rivers, fostered as a life-long angler. He now campaigns for clean rivers and a cleaned up water industry.

An absolutely incredible life and the contrast in the linked videos between the youthful and wizened versions of Sharkey is as important a discussion as each individual part of his life. The common thread between the two clearly being the punk ethos and causing trouble for ‘the man’.

-Bill