Around this time, I used to make a habit of writing all my lyrics on the back of the white envelopes with green stripes that I’d get from the Housing Benefit team, who would be writing to say “We’ve calculated that you need £x to survive, so we’ve given you that, minus £150 so that you can’t” before writing again to say: “That money we said you were entitled to, you actually weren’t, and we made a mistake, so you must pay us £2,400 immediately even though we know you can’t because you paid your rent for 3 months, and then once we have it, we’ll give it you back again, almost, maybe ps no we won’t” etc. It seemed like a karma sandworm I could hitch my Muad’dib’s hooks into and ride all the way to a record deal and world domination. Occasionally, it’d be the brown jobseekers/new deal envelopes. It was around this time that I became slightly more politically active, when I was sat in an internet cafe on Caledonian Road with 5 other people panicking in very different ways about the same housing benefit error. Most were writing rants and avowed to burn any more letters they got, but having seen this approach cause immense grief for a family member over the years, I wrote an email to Chris Smith, the then culture secretary to tell him my situation, and that of everyone in the cafe. To my surprise – especially as it was about 1:30pm already – I received a letter on House of Commons paper the next morning, reassuring me I’d be receiving an apology from Islington Council, that my case was already resolved, and that he was looking into the cases of the others in the cafe I had mentioned. he congratulated me for contacting him and asked if I’d like to join the labour party. And that, is how you’d hope all MP’s would be.