FED up with so much miserable news? Prepare yourself for some more. Coldplay have just announced that they are releasing a new album next month and, worse still, it’s a double. That’s awful.

But there is an antidote available right now. Cancelled Rearranged, the brilliant new album by Skewwhiff, has just been released and I had a wonderful time as special guest at the launch party in their home town of Worcester last Friday week in front of a very enthusiastic audience.

Fame is a strange and fickle thing. I’m sure most of you have seen performers of all kinds in pubs and small venues who have wowed you with their brilliance and thought: “How the hell are they not household names?”

And, equally, I’m sure you’ve often gazed at the telly in wonder at steaming heaps of pretentious smegma touted as timeless work.

Yes, the old cliche: “It’s not what you know but who you know” is never truer than in the world of the performing arts. Skewwhiff are 80 billion times more invigorating and life-affirming than Coldplay — and 80 billion times less well known.

That’s not fair. But we at the Star are in the business of combating unfairness and that’s what I’m doing right now.

Skewwhiff are a powerful, melodic, guitar-fired four-piece fronted by the acerbic and intelligent Hannah Bean, whose soaring voice and incisive lyrics deal with contemporary women’s issues – mental health, objectification and ageing in a forthright, incisive and perceptive way.

Most obvious comparisons would be with late-1970s agit-poppers The Au Pairs or the Gang of Four and indeed they did a superb cover of the Au Pairs’ It’s Obvious on their debut album Nice Little Upper a few years ago. But Skewwhiff stand on their own, and never more so than on the title track of this album.

Hannah works as a drugs counsellor during the day and Cancelled Rearranged is taken from her own experience helping clients with substance and mental health issues in the age of swingeing cuts to social services:

“Appointment arranged, rearranged and cancelled
Phone up for an appointment or you can drop in for a chat
We’re closed on Mondays, closed on Tuesdays, open Wednesday afternoon
Fit in around this and yes, you fit in around that
An assessment’s been arranged but the doctor’s not in today
So we’ve cancelled your assessment, will put a new one in the post
If you disengage with us then we will disengage with you...”

An anthem for our times. As indeed is the opener 1942 — not a date, but two ages combined, as Hannah reflects on how she felt about the world then and now, aged 19 and 42: “Not pretty, just vacant.” I can’t recommend this album enough and it's available from skewwhiff.bandcamp.com

Pub plug. Well, it is a pub, kind of... If you live near Horley check out Fifty Four. It’s a name, it’s a number on the High Street, it’s a lean-to bar made of surplus plastic and bits of stick, it’s run by an old skiffle punk called Woody, it does great beer and it’s a brilliant antidote to the Coldplaydom of Surrey suburbia.

It sits on the national cycle route into London and I bumped into it while cycling to London from Shoreham in aid of Medical Aid for Palestine last year. I did a gig there soon afterwards and another one last week. It’s a wonderful place with a plastic corrugated iron roof, a strange chemical toilet, sparkly things hanging from the ceiling, a thoroughly friendly crowd and all kinds of great stuff going on.

Though it absolutely pissed down as was I was playing, the roof doesn’t leak. You want character in an age of Slug and Lettuce pub chains? You got it.

Last night I saw Gryphon, pioneers of Renaissance rock, at our lovely local Ropetackle Arts Centre in Shoreham. Not enough crumhorn for my liking since the departure of woodwind maestro Richard Harvey but respect still due.

And there you go – a whole column without a mention of Brexit bollocks. Oh, hang on a minute...