Back in my youth I met some characters who were a right bunch, but what we had in common was that we loved Deaf School. It's strange how this theatrical band from Liverpool touched the children of North London.

In Madness we'd all listened to Deaf School records. Their first album was a big phenomenon in our lives. In 1975 they played at the Roundhouse in Camden, which was the greatest music venue in the world as far as we were concerned, and I was bowled over by them. You'd had glam rock, which was starting to go all brickies in stack-heel boots. Even pub rock was getting flabby. But Deaf School seemed to elevate themselves above everything. Though they occasionally played in pubs, you were transported into some faded theatre at the turn of the century.

They totally informed the way we formed Madness. It was inspiring that you could have that many people on stage. They offered you the whole mixture, the all-encompassing night out. The music itself was absorbing, but with the visual theatricality you really had 180 degrees. The interaction of different people on stage, the fact that we had saxophone, piano, two vocalists – a lot of things came from Deaf School. And we loved the notion that they all had pseudonyms, like Enrico Cadillac. This was all before punk, when everyone did it. Or Max Ripple, stopping the show half way through to deliver a sermon on the dangers of celery. Bette Bright, though, was the one that caught my eye…

Our band was an unruly bunch of yobbos, but we liked fashion and we liked music. We got our first gig at the Hope & Anchor in Islington, a proper music pub and a big deal for us. We knew the guv'nor, because we'd been hanging around there and used to put Deaf School songs on the jukebox. The place only held about 40 people, but we heard that Deaf School were in town – and they were coming to see us!

So I remember backstage after the gig, which was the gentlemen's toilets. I was strolling in the direction of the delightful Miss Bright, just in time to overhear her saying, ‘I thought the band were great. But the singer's not all that.’