THE Angelic Upstarts in their pomp look like the sort of heavyweight Geordies who open doors with their foreheads and eat rusty nails for breakfast.

Their searing debut single The Murder of Liddle Towers/Police Oppression set the tone for one of punk’s most thought-provoking bands, led by the fiery and often outspoken singer Thomas Mensforth, known as Mensi.

Mensi began work at Westoe Colliery in South Shields, aged 18, but the Angelic Upstarts provided him with the escape route he needed to join punk’s uprising.

“We were working class lads from a rough council estate and what we were living is what other groups were writing about then,” said Mensi, who brings the Upstarts to next month’s Rebellion Punk Festival at Blackpool.

“I’ve never been one for an easy life or a quiet ride and in some circles we were highly unpopular, still are,” he said. “I’m 61, but angrier now than ever.

“And I don’t know how anybody can say that punk is dead.

“But even playing in front of 2,000 fans at Rebellion I still feel like the loneliest bloke in the world.”

Mensi says seeing The Clash play at Middlesbrough’s Rock Garden Club on the band’s 1977 White Riot tour changed his life.

“I worshipped The Clash, still do, but Joe Strummer broke my heart,” he revealed.

“Strummer said in an interview, ‘Mensi tries to sing with soul, when he is soulless. He is a shouter, not a singer'.

“Can you imagine your hero, the guy you looked up to as a teenager and a god to me, saying that about you.

“I’m a very emotional man and confronted Joe, told him that what he said was inverted snobbery.

“I said: ‘What is your problem with me? Is it because we were pure working class, coming from virtual poverty?’

“He was shocked, but he could see what it had done to me. We talked for hours, argued, made up and then fell out again several times.

“I never really got over it.”

Mensi added: “However, we became firm friends a year or two before Joe died and I’m glad that happened because Joe was a shining light in the world.”

The Upstarts even went to prison voluntarily, convincing a kind-hearted prison chaplain to allow them to play what the chaplain thought would be a folk gig at a Durham jail.

“That was crazy, we did the show in front of 150 prisoners, and all hell broke loose the next day,” he recalled.

“It was on the front page of the Daily Mirror and all the local MPs went nuts, talking about these awful punks.

“Some of the stuff we did then, well, you’d never get away with it today.

“Nobody protests today and they just sing la! la! la and tend their roses.

“I worry about the world for my grandchildren and if you don’t then you’re a fool.”

Mensi quit the Upstarts a decade ago but came out retirement a year later.

He said: “The Angelic Upstarts is like joining the Mafia, you can have a break but you can never leave.

“People say that the Upstarts never got the recognition, but that is for others to decide, but I did feel like we were the punk band who’d always be in the kitchen at parties.”

Mensi says that the annual Rebellion punk bash remains his favourite event of the year.

“There’s a massive camaraderie between the bands, and to me that’s what punk is all about.”

Rebellion Festival at the Winter Gardens, Blackpool, runs from August 2-5. The Angelic Upstarts play the Club Casbah stage on the Friday, August 3. Details from 02476 601678 or www.rebellionfestivals.com