Neil: Hello! Awfully glad to be come. Welcome to The Divine Comedy plus the Brunel Ensemble at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Hurrah! Well, do you like my band? It’s only vaguely […]. It’s taken 25 years and 11 months to get this far, but it was worth it, just to see your happy smiling faces. I feel positively heroic.

I see
Oriental paper globes
Hanging like decomposing cocoons
And tasteless tie-dyed fertility
That double up their strange perfumes.
(This is mistake number 1.)
I see
Lentils, beans, seaweed and rice
In jars on the windowsill
And it ain’t hardly enough to feed the mice
Running behind the lines of allergy pills.

Well these things will come to pass
When heroes of the middle class
Face up to their responsibilities.

I see
An Indian fertility God -
He’s got thirty seven limbs to spare -
And tasteless tie-dyed tablecloths,
That double up as evening wear,
And I see
Naked bodies twist and turn
On the futon of dreams fulfilled
But their three-year-old kid seems unconcerned -
He’d rather swallow all those allergy pills.

And all these things will come to pass
When heroes of the middle class
Face up to their responsibilities.

I see
Unspeakable vulgarity,
Institutionalised mediocrity,
Infinite tragedy.
Rise up little souls join the doomed army,
Fight the good fight, wage the unwinnable war:
Elegance against ignorance,
Difference against indifference,
Wit against shit!

“My words fly up to heaven,
My thoughts remain below.
Words said without feeling
Never to heaven go,
Never to heaven go,
Never to heaven go,
Never to heaven go.”

And all these things will come to pass
When heroes of the middle-class
Face up, repent and pay the price
For accidentally creating life -
An oversight for which they must atone
And sacrifice their own.

Neil: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.