It was 1977, and a scrawny teenage me was sitting in my Chelmsley Wood home hoping to see my idols Stevie Wonder or Bob Marley on Top of the Pops. Instead, my interest was piqued by a scrawny teenage Paul Weller and his band The Jam.

“In the city there’s a thousand things I wanna say to you,” was the first phrase he ever barked on national TV and little did I know at the time, it was an underestimate. Later on that night, hanging around outside the Seagull chippie, I mentioned it to my mate Rob Henn. Rob was the local ace-face, the leader of the Area One Mod Squad, and someone I looked up to like a cooler older brother. I had hoped I was telling him about something he didn’t know but, true to form, he already had the album and we decamped to his to listen to it. “In The City’s not the best tune on it – this is,” he said as the needle dropped on Non-Stop Dancing. One couplet in particular caught my ear: “When you’re dancing all night long, it gives you the feeling that you belong”.

Rob and I thought it was about the Northern Soul all-nighters at Wigan Casino I’d read about in Black Echoes magazine but was frustratingly too young to attend. (Rob had been – of course). It turned out it was about Soul nights Weller had enjoyed at Woking Football Club, but it’s the thought that counts. I bought the album, then the songbook with the lyrics in, then the tickets to see them at Barbarellas – one English pound I think it was. So began the habit of a lifetime. Weller outgrew Barbs, the Odeon and Bingley Hall as quickly as I outgrew Fred Perrys and I had another cooler older brother to look up to.

In ’87 I saw Weller with The Style Council at Wembley Arena, the leading political popster in an era of political pop. In ’97 I was at a massive outdoor gig in Victoria Park, London to see him introduced and crowned as the Godfather of Britpop by Noel Gallagher. In 2007 I recall a particularly ‘wired’ performance at the NIA just before he broke up his long-standing backing band (only retaining Brummie Steve Craddock) and embarked on a creative purple patch that started with 22 Dreams and continues to this day.

So here we are in 2017, which promises to be a big year in a lifetime of big years. He’s already released a soundtrack album for the boxing film Jawbone, starring Johnny Harris (This Is England), Ian McShane and Ray Winstone. Solo studio album number thirteen is out in May, and baby number eight is expected in the summer.

The day got off to a great start when a package marked ‘Fragile’ came through my letterbox. A nice surprise from the aforementioned Rob Henn – a couple of CDs of rare sixties RnB, and the welcome return of a demo copy of Ray Charles’ Hit The Road Jack that I gave to Rob 35 years ago in exchange for a beautiful, long-collared button-down shirt that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Peter Wyngarde as Jason King. By the time I’d had my haircut and prepped my desert boots with a nail brush it was time to go. I was attending with another Seagull Mods veteran, Tony Baldwin, who now lives near Tamworth, so I caught the train to the former capital of Mercia and completed the trip from the edge of Greater Birmingham to Leicester on a Lambretta SX200.

Weller obviously hadn’t checked the Premier League fixtures before booking the venue, and Leicester City being at home meant that, in the words of Booker T Jones and the Memphis Group, time was tight. Thanks to being on two wheels though, we were able to weave through the heavy traffic and had time for a pint in the venue. We got to our seats only to find that due to a recent refurb, our seats had ceased to exist. After trying and failing to get the box office to let us watch from backstage or the royal box, we acquiesced to their only offer and entered the standing area just as The Guv’nor took the stage.

He looked the business in an immaculate Levi jacket and a short French-line haircut, and started off with the barnstorming trio of White Sky, Long Time and I’m Where I Should Be, all from his most recent album Saturn’s Pattern. Jam classic Ghosts was soon followed by Style Council anthem My Ever Changing Moods and the gig was off to a flyer. Weller spent the next two hours giving us a mere taste of all the truly great music he has created during his stellar career.

The cool jazz of Have You Ever Had It Blue? from what Weller called “a terrible film”, Absolute Beginners, gave way to a wistful Above The Clouds, followed by the anthemic Friday Street and a rocking Start! Songs from his new album, A Kind Revolution, sparkled with the promise of undimmed creativity, particularly Long Long Road. There was an acoustic interlude which included Wildwood and the gorgeous Ballad of Jimmy McCabe, and a spell at the piano which proved yet again that he can turn his hand to virtually anything. The crowd-pleasers kept on coming and there was a particularly epic version of Into Tomorrow and a storming Changingman to finish.

So why didn’t I enjoy it as much as usual? For a start it was a bit chatty where I was – there were three women rabbiting away in front of me and two of them actually had their backs to the stage. Forty-five quid to have a natter! Tony didn’t help with his phone updating him on the Villa game – and him updating me – throughout. We were also distracted by a lesbian couple who were obviously very much in love, not that I’m complaining about that.

But those intrusions aside, I’m blaming Brexit and Lady Leshurr. Having seen her live recently, tonight’s gig was a little staid in comparison. The crowd was older, more conservative, less diverse, less energetic and less enthusiastic. Maybe there was a Pink Floyd fan at Barbarella’s who was blown away by The Jam and from then on questioned everything he held dear. That was me when I saw Lady Leshurr.

Having been doing this for twenty, thirty or forty years, maybe we’ve begun to take Weller for granted? Or perhaps, while he keeps on keepin’ on as Dorian Gray, his audience are the ones who age in the portrait.

You may be wondering how the hell can Brexit be to blame? Well, it’s probably an unfair generalisation, but if ever a crowd at a non-political event epitomised Brexit, this was it. Union Jacks and red, white and blue RAF ensigns everywhere you looked. Narrow-minded people who eschew the new and get all happy, boisterous and/or aggressive when the old days are revisited. So-called Modernists who shun modernity. (A bit like patriots voting to ruin their own country).

Rumour has it that the Weller song Fast Car, Slow Traffic is about The Man Himself and the section of his audience that only likes the old tunes – him being the fast car, them being the slow traffic holding him up. It certainly has a ring of truth about it, because Weller really is the antithesis of this closed, nostalgic mind-set. Always open to new ideas, always looking forward. Some of this crowd don’t deserve him.

I was speaking to one old Mod in the bar. Like me his clothes fitted him fine everywhere but his belly, and I asked him if he’d heard Weller’s good news about expecting his eighth child in the summer. “Oh well,” he said . “At least he won’t be claiming benefits for it”.

You don’t get people worrying about benefit scroungers at Lady Leshurr gigs.