HUGE congratulations to organisers Joe Solo, Pete Yen and Matt Hill for the brilliant We Shall Overcome Isolation Festival, broadcast online on Facebook Live for 12 hours last Saturday.

It reached tens of thousands of people, introduced us all to many wonderful performers we had never seen before and, at the time of writing, has raised over £26,600 for Pauline Town’s initiative to help the homeless in Ashton-under-Lyne.

And it helped me reach hitherto unknown reaches of the internet stratosphere — to boldly go where this old punk rocker had never gone before.

The technical brain-frazzling involved in self-isolation online video broadcasting was beyond my wildest comprehension a month ago. It would have been a gross overestimation of my abilities to have described me as an IT dinosaur.

I was an uncomprehending amoebic IT fossil, suspended and preserved in an equally antediluvian primaeval IT soup.

But I was galvanised by the desire to perform live at a time when live performances had, justifiably, been ruled unsafe and by the realisation that the large Facebook following for my poems, songs and blog meant I could do so to a considerable number of people and raise money for those who need it, locally and nationally.

I activated parts of my brain left lying fallow for 62 years and, gradually and painfully and with a large number of frustrating hiatuses, moved through the various evolutionary stages of computer tech.

From amoebic fossil, after much diligent application, I achieved the status of multi-celled organism. Then I became a primitive fish and soon took my first tentative steps out of the murky waters of utter bafflement.

Soon I was a land-dwelling vertebrate. With my first online broadcast, three weeks ago, I proudly grew to the cherished status of — YES! — dinosaur.

Last Saturday Matt Hill taught me how to broadcast to two pages at once for my stint during the Isolation Festival, which meant I was a fully qualified neanderthal.

Last night I guested on my friend Janine Booth’s page, helping her launch her excellent new poetry book Fighting Tories : The Force Awakens, available from janinebooth.com. Solid progress on the way to my next goal, homo erectus. Hopefully, I can rise to the challenge.

But enough of my IT struggles and back to Isolation Festival. Many of the performers were very well-known to me — my old 1980s sparring partner Billy Bragg, the wonderful Grace Petrie, Steve White and his Protest Family, Robb Johnson and loads more.

I made some ace new discoveries in the shape of Billy Liar, Maddy Carty, Carol Hodge and Bernie Laverick and there are still more I need to listen to again. It was brilliantly shepherded and introduced by Joe Solo, and Barnsley Sime did the honours as virtual DJ. A complete and utter triumph.

And Isolation Festival has inspired me to launch Virtual Glastonwick on Saturday, June 6. Our West Sussex music and beer festival, due to celebrate its 25th year and of course cancelled, will now be online, with many of the line-up performing and donations going to our local food bank and peer-to-peer support group.

But I won’t be running the tech side, don’t worry, I have an IT homo sapiens in the shape of Paul Stapleton to do that.

I’m doing two live broadcasts this weekend. On Saturday, at 3pm, it’s Attila’s Football Waffle for all those who are missing the action. We were supposed to be playing Liverpool and I am going to come up with a convincing theory as to how we’d have beaten them.

And on Sunday at 8pm I shall be doing a set of my songs. All live at facebook.com/attilathestockbroker with food-bank and support donations at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/attilathestockbrokersouthwick2