THERE you go. British holidaymakers banned from EU after January 1 due to Covid restrictions. And lots of lovely red tape waiting after the pandemic’s over. Now that’s what I call taking back control. We’ll show ‘em!

As for my sector, well, we DIY musicians can forget about gigs — vastly too much cost and red tape, though of course Roger “the EU is just a mafia, we toured before we joined and we will again after” Daltrey with his vast wealth, Nightliners and army of bureaucrats will be OK.

Classical musicians? Make sure your instruments don’t contain any protected species, even 300-year old ones and let’s hope you play for a big orchestra, or you’re in the same position as us.

But we don’t actually need music to live. We do need jobs, energy, medicines and food.

Don’t worry, of course we’ll have food. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of fish and turnips — the EU won’t be purchasing and processing it any more, so it’s all for us!

Smoked haddock and turnips for breakfast, mackerel and turnips for lunch, cod and turnips for dinner — or scallops round where I live but not at the French prices though, sorry. And you’ll have to prepare it yourselves, just like you did in the old days.

Yes, you’ve probably forgotten after all these years, but fish has heads and guts and bones, it doesn’t swim around wrapped in breadcrumbs and batter, you know.

And turnips are lovely. Rule Britannia!

Hopefully both sides will eventually realise that harassing musicians — and all the other small operators in different fields who are simply trying to earn a living — is silly and let us ply our trade as I have done quite happily over there for 28 years.

But I’m not counting on it and may have done my last ever gig in mainland Europe, which makes me very angry.

In the meantime, I hope I’ll still somehow be able to evade the mutually assured destruction at the border and sneak over to Hamburg to watch FC St Pauli from time to time.

I have supported the world’s most left-wing, anti-fascist, punk-rock football club, with regular visits and gigs, ever since being told about the early developments there while performing at the Political Song Festival in late-1980s East Berlin.

It was with great pleasure that I recently got hold of a review copy of an excellent new book, Another Football Is Possible, on this unique club, from its birth in 1910 to the present day.

For much of its existence, until the mid-1980s, St Pauli was just Hamburg’s “second team.” In the shadow of the better known HSV, it had a history similar to any other club.

Then, a few of the inhabitants of the nearby Hafenstrasse squats started going to games. Things really started to change when squatter and radical leftist Volker Ippig was taken on as first-team goalkeeper.

By the time I first saw a match in 1990 there were hundreds of punks and anti-fascists at games and this grew exponentially until the name St Pauli became globally renowned as a symbol of a leftist alternative culture within football and every home game is a glorious celebration of this.

The St Pauli skull-and-crossbones emblem is renowned throughout the world and such has been the success of what is now very much a brand that there is now a big debate within the fanbase about over-commercialisation.

Another Football Is Possible details the early years of the club, the only part of the story partially unknown to me, in an informative style and then the story of its rebirth as a radical club unfolds.

As someone who has lived through this, and is credited in the book for having done so, I can testify to the authenticity of the authors’ account and thoroughly recommend this book to anyone interested in an exhaustive analysis of the phenomenon which is St Pauli.

I’ll tell you how special the club is. For one of my many gigs over the years I was booked to do the St Pauli stage in 2015 at the annual Hafengeburtstag festival. I was diagnosed with bladder cancer and had to cancel. Their response was a huge banner across the stand: “Attila, beat the beast, St Pauli is with you.”

I’ll never forget that.

Another Football Is Possible by Carles Vinas and Natxo Parra is published by Pluto Press.