THE BILL GRUNDY INTERVIEW

Often misquoted, this is an accurate transcription of the interview which went out live on 1 December 1976.

The original Sex Pistols line-up are seated - from left to right as the camera sees them - Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Glen Matlock and Paul Cook. Bill Grundy sits to their left. Standing behind the Pistols are the punk hangers-on from the Bromley Contingent, Siouxsie Sioux, Steve Severin, Simon Barker and 'Simone'.

Grundy introduces the band to the cameras.

GRUNDY: (To camera) They are punk rockers. The new craze, they tell me. Their heroes? Not the nice, clean Rolling Stones... you see they are as drunk as I am... they are clean by comparison. They're a group called The Sex Pistols, and I am surrounded by all of them...

JONES (Reading the autocue) In action!

GRUNDY: Just let us see The Sex Pistols in action. Come on kids...

[Film of The Sex Pistols in action is shown; then back to Grundy.]

GRUNDY: I am told that that group (hits his knee with sheaf of papers) have received forty thousand pounds from a record company. Doesn't that seem, er, to be slightly opposed to their anti-materialistic view of life?

MATLOCK: No, the more the merrier.

GRUNDY: Really?

MATLOCK: Oh yeah.

GRUNDY: Well tell me more then.

JONES: We've fuckin' spent it, ain't we?

GRUNDY: I don't know, have you?

MATLOCK: Yeah, it's all gone.

GRUNDY: Really?

JONES: Down the boozer.

GRUNDY: Really? Good Lord! Now I want to know one thing...

MATLOCK: What?

GRUNDY: Are you serious or are you just making me, trying to make me laugh?

MATLOCK: No, it's all gone. Gone.

GRUNDY: Really?

MATLOCK: Yeah.

GRUNDY: No, but I mean about what you're doing.

MATLOCK: Oh yeah.

GRUNDY: You are serious?

MATLOCK: Mmm.

GRUNDY: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Brahms have all died...

ROTTEN: They're all heroes of ours, ain't they?

GRUNDY: Really... what? What were you saying, sir?