I MET Janine Booth for the first time when she was 16 on April 16, 1983. I remember the date well because it was the day Brighton reached the FA Cup Final for our first, and so far only, time by beating Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 at Highbury in the semi-final.

Tumour humourist: Janine Booth

She’d come to interview me for her fanzine Blaze at my post-match gig at the Cricklewood Hotel in north-west London and I don’t remember anything about the interview or the gig because, understandably, I was far too pissed. But Janine and I have been great friends ever since.

Still very young, she joined our team as a fine ranting poet — The Big J — and went on to become a Tube worker, RMT activist, women’s rights campaigner, mother of three lovely sons, neurodiversity advocate, author and about 80 billion other things.

She started writing poetry again a few years ago and is one of the finest performers on the circuit.

Then, in 2016, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She took it on with the same energy and determination she does everything else and started a blog about it. I was diagnosed with bladder cancer about the same time and followed her posts with interest.

Like me, she was determined to try and use her experience to help others and tumour humour – loads of boob jokes in her case, knob jokes in mine – was a big part of that.

The blog has turned into a book and the book is so bloody good she deserves the first ever Booby Prize for Literature for it. It’s definitely the breast book I have ever read on the subject: full of clarity, worry, humour, explanations about how capitalism hampers medical practice and love, praise and commitment to the NHS.

It demystifies and humanises the cancer experience and inspires and entertains the reader. It’s called The Big J vs the Big C and is available from janinebooth.com. Well done Janine.

Up north again for gigs this week. On Thursday, I was in my wife’s home town of Northwich for a fundraiser for the local fan-owned football club, 1874 Northwich, yesterday at a Labour Party fund raiser in Burley in Wharfedale, tonight in Glossop, one of my favourite towns in the country.

Then, next Monday, a very special gig. My home town of Southwick, just west of Brighton, has always been a bit of a beer desert but just over a year ago this was rectified as a new specialist micropub, The Beer Engine, opened in our shopping centre.

It was a brave venture but it’s doing very well and to celebrate I have invited my old, mad sparring partner John Otway down for some Monday Night Mayhem. That’s what the night is called,and that is what it will be.

Next Thursday I make a welcome return visit to the lovely Fifty Four bar in Horley, Surrey, and Friday I’m in Worcester as special guest of my friends Skewwhiff at the launch of their new album. And then, who knows?

Next month, eight days after we are supposed to be leaving the EU, I’m due to be going to Belgium for a weekend of gigs. We musicians who have toured Europe freely and easily since 1992 still don’t know what’s happening. Will we need carnets? Will we have to pay import duty on merch? Will our European health cards still be valid?

And we’re just musicians. We don’t import or export food or stuff people need to live.  The people who run the port at the end of my road are tearing their hair out and the same goes for all of us who deal with the mainland, up and down the country.

What a ludicrous, irresponsible, catastrophic, insane, moronic, avoidable, self-harming clusterfuck the whole Brexit thing is.