Top Of The Pops was first my portal into pop. Already struck by Sham 69’s angsty cavort through ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’, though not quite enough to buy it, I was powerless not to spend all my 45p pocket money on ‘If The Kids Are United’. A slightly earnest terrace anthem, it proved to be their most accessible hit (one that was ill-advisedly revived by Tony Blair at 2005’s Labour conference). However, it’s B-side was even better. After Walton Hop veteran Jimmy Pursey’s animated cod DJ introduction (“Okay! All you disco kids…”), Dave Parsons bluesy guitar riff morphed into a more straightforward thrash to carry the singer’s very British corollary to Saturday Night Fever, littered with lager, fights, vomit, love bites, pregnancy and smashed up jam jars. Armed with a catchy, off-centre chorus (“Don’t do it!/They won’t let us do it!”), Pursey also snuck in a topical moan at the inescapable Grease mania of the time (“Me brother thinks he looks like John Travolta/And me sister thinks she’s Olivia Newton John”). Tellingly, only the B-side appeared on Sham’s high-concept second album That’s Life – a tricksy bit of Mike Leigh-styled social realism that’s a less-knowing conceptual precursor to Blur’s Parklife – but with its great hammy intro loped off. That’s why this this B-side take is still essential.