The emergency door at the back of the bus flew open and three pairs of impressively large but badly manicured hands reached in and tried to drag me out. They had tasted blood and they wanted more.

I'd already been kicked to the ground for wearing a bowler hat on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of Manchester's Piccadilly Gardens but, luckily, two sexagenarian shoppers intervened. My new friend, whom I'd only met four hours ago, was considerably more fleet of foot in his white gym plimsolls than me. They were the last thing I saw as he accelerated with the commendable alacrity of Zola Budd and shot past me into the distance - before those uncouth hands wrenched at my jacket.

One sees this in wildlife programmes: the slavering pack of hyenas that gang up on the proud, beautiful mother cheetah to bring her down. But this particular cheetah was wearing cork-heeled boots, which tends to slow you up on the Serengeti of Central Manchester.

The soon-to-be most important lyricist of the 20th century met me at the ticket barrier of Piccadilly station earlier that afternoon.
I immediately saw that he had been putting on a 'brave front' since 1959, resisting both decimalisation and new fabrics. He immediately saw – a bowler hat. He looked a little like Patti Smith on the cover of "Horses" but dressed as Dee Dee Ramone and carried a satchel stuffed with vitamin pills and blank postcards. He would liberally distribute these postcards – upon which he scrawled cryptic messages – at bus stops, telephone booths and pubs. One might sit down in the Snug of a bar to sip a gin and tonic only to find a card pinned under the ashtray bearing the communiqué:

"I ENJOY EMPHASIS IN THE WRONG PLACE."

Alternatively, one peruses a bus schedule – iced cream in hand, en route into town to buy that pair of fancy new fashion jeans that you've had your eye on all week to find a blank postcard slipped under the fibreglass mounting. Curious, you tease it out:

"YAWNING EMPTINESS DEMANDS EVER MORE DIMINISHING TREATS."

In September 1977 the New Musical Express had published another of his letters exhorting them to give more press coverage to the bands of the post-glam New York scene. They had printed his full address which I duly submitted to Directory Enquiries who, in turn, gave me his home telephone number.

"Operator, can you put me through to Manchester 666-7125?"

Momentary silence.

The click of buttons.

Connection.

Two hundred miles distant the calm of a damp, Stretford hallway is violently broken by the electronic trill of a 1970s Trimphone.

"Yes?"

The young man's voice was soft and hesitant.

"Steven Morrissey?"

A kettle began to scream in the background.

"Yes?" Mildly distracted.

"Hello. My name is James Maker. I am savagely distorted but I'd like to discuss the New York 8Dolls."

"I want you off this bus," the driver shouted.

We had fled to a waiting bus after the kicking incident. We stood very closely behind two people and their dogs to form part of a queue, hopelessly trying to blend in, when we realised that they were blind and had no idea what was going on. There was no-one that we could appeal to. We were spotted again and, as the gang drew near, we ran onto another bus bound for Lower Broughton. Outside, seven pairs of tattooed fists graphically expressed their desire to drive their chunky sovereign rings into our pretty little faces.

I had escaped the grabbing hands only by accurate and vicious deployment of my cork-heeled boots and we were now sat at the front – away from the emergency door - rigid with obstinacy. Morrissey has been compared to many people, most notably Oscar Wilde, but on that afternoon he was the Rosa Parks of Old Trafford.

"I refuse to give up my seat on this bus," he said, quietly.

"You are refusing to leave this bus?" replied the driver, nostrils flared.

"Yes. I refuse to alight." The arms were folded. Unbudgeable.

A Morrisseyean tactic. Some people advance by fighting and struggling and pushing and scratching; others sometimes advance by simply not moving at all – in effect, the locomotion is driven by the force of inertia.

The other passengers grew restless and the driver eventually relented, slamming the bus into gear as we all lurched out of the bus station. The beer monsters ran along side us and, in a misguided act of appeasement, I threw coins at them out of the air vent of a side window.

"You shouldn't have done that," said my friend, staring studiously ahead while, inches away, a face utterly contorted with hatred bellowed heavily-brewed obscenities in a north Manchester dialect at the pane of glass separating us.

"But what do they want?" I asked, beginning to feel bruised as the adrenaline subsided.

"You," he replied, popping a peppermint into his mouth.