1998. I was all set to trade my itinerant life for a move to Rome; Craig was living the domestic idyll on a housing estate in Luton. The glamour was short-lived, though, and with our respective relationships suddenly crashed and burnt, we both found ourselves back in the comforting bosom of The Midlands – periods of rehabilitation courtesy of Yarker’s Batchelorium. At the tail end of that year, Craig Stephens and I syphoned our collective angst into the blender hoping for some cheap creative therapy. A loose pastiche of early ’70s classic The Persuaders (with well-heeled renegade Roger Moore paired up with street-wise Tony Curtis) was envisaged as the perfect retro-chic vehicle for our re-invented selves: The Perseverers.

For a decade those master-tapes languished in a dusty drawer. But now, finally, they have been digitised for universal consumption. Flying Down to Malta, Fine Art and the brooding existentialism of Extension 526; all meditations on the unending quest for meaningfulness. A fourth video, Casanova Beat, was considered either too violent or too rubbish for inclusion.

We played one live gig, at Jaki & Viki’s birthday bash. We partied like it was 1999, which it indeed was. The dream became real. We quickly got girlfriends. And had a break from the music industry – for 9 years. Thanks to The Kitchen Garden Cafe in King’s Heath, The Perseverers have returned to host a couple of Retort evenings in the past year and there is the promise of some new material soon.