First came Morrisseygate where — thanks to the amazing space-age technology of the Web 2.0 — for the first time the liberal PC music journalist brigade felt the collective righteous wrath of an arse-kissing fandom that totally and utterly and like absofuckinglutely knew that nothing Morrissey ever did or said or thought could ever be anything other than totally nice and great and wonderful.

And now there’s Lydonngate. And to save you the trouble of bending over backwards and twisting logic like a demented semi-sentient spastic pretzel in a Twister competition to defend your hero, we’ve done it for you. All you have to do is cut’n’paste one of the following and send it back to us at the Quietus. Let’s shut me the fuck up!

a) Lydon isn't racist.

b) What Lydon did isn't racist.

c) What's wrong with racism anyway?

d) Racism isn't racist.

e) If only people would stop complaining about racism, there wouldn't be any.

f) Racism is the fault of non-white people.

g) If everybody was white there wouldn't be any racism.

h) Lydon can't possibly be racist, so by definition what happened wasn't racist.

i) Good for Lydon for sticking up for good old fashioned British racism.

j) It's typical of the knee jerk liberal media to portray every simple incident of someone being beaten up and racially insulted as "racist".

k) The people who label such incidents "racist" are the same ones who claim that anyone who's sincerely concerned about immigration is racist. And that the BNP is "extreme right wing" and Hitler was a "Nazi" and that the Daily Mail is a vile little groin-clutching rag read by neurotics, fascists and the insane.

l) People like you who go around calling everything racist are the sole cause of racism.

m) Just because people object to black people being backstage (at what after all is a European festival) doesn't make them racist.

n) This is all part of the concerted liberal media attempt to smear all of us who want to keep our backstages free of non-English accents as "racist".

o) There is a hysterical media witch hunt to portray Lydon as racist.

p) The alleged incident never happened, and if it did there's a perfectly reasonable explanation, and if there isn't then what he did wasn't wrong anyway.

q) How can anyone who wrote such stirring anti-racist songs be a racist?

r) The accusations of racism are thinly disguised homophobia.

s) OK, maybe not the last one.

t) The fact that all those people who accused (name deleted on the advice of our lawyers) of being racist aren’t accusing (name deleted on the advice of our lawyers) of being racist, is clear proof there is a massive and widespread and probably Jewish conspiracy against (name deleted on the advice of our lawyers).

u) The above, with the names switched around.

v) Those of us who have been campaigning for a long time for the rights of white Britons who work in the backstage industry (without being forced by the PC brigade to have contact with those whose ancestors emigrated to these islands post 1066) have regularly been mocked as alarmist and “racist” by the liberal media. And yet here it is—Enoch Powell’s “river of blood”. Hope you’re happy, communist scum.

w) Just because someone says that it’s possible to walk through the backstage of an English venue in, say, Knightsbridge or Barcelona, and not hear a single English accent, that doesn’t make you racist. And besides—it’s true. I’ve worked as a professional groupie herder for many of the top British bands and I can tell you that that as soon as one steps off the ferry at Dover, the accents get thicker and unEnglisher. It really is a disgrace. And don’t get me started on Glasgow.

x) What was a black person doing asking impertinent questions backstage at a music concert anyway? I’m not racist but I’m pretty sure that under similar circumstances I might have surrounded myself with thugs who were.

y) It’s just one more step on the slippery slope to the PC gulag. First they stopped us using the n and the w word, Now it’s apparently wrong to hit people. This is how Hitler got started.

z) First they came for Morrissey and I was silent. Then they came for Johnny Rotten, and I said nothing …