PUNK legend John Lydon will be giving a Crewe Lyceum audience a piece of his mind on Sunday.

Storytelling, rather than music, will be on the agenda for the former Sex Pistol in a re-arranged date cancelled last year because of Covid's grip over live entertainment.

Back in the late 1970s music scene Lydon's penning of the controversial God Save the Queen in Jubilee year revolted royalists and the beholders of good taste, as did many of the antics of The Sex Pistols under the guidance of manipulative impresario Malcolm McLaren.

Yet one of the reasons behind Lydon's departure from the group at the end of an American tour in 1978 should strike a chord with a Crewe audience.

The young Lydon was appalled by a song-writing link-up McLaren had lined up with the Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs in Rio De Janiero. On the run from British justice, Biggs was part of the infamous gang which coshed Crewe train driver Jack Mills during a hijacking of a payroll train north of London.

Although the career criminal - who escaped from Wandsworth Prison less than two years into his sentence - did not inflict the blow he was reviled by the railway community, while his celebrity notoriety was maintained by Fleet Street.

The Cheshire train driver survived the attack, but never fully recovered from his injuries and died seven years after the 1963 train robbery. A link road route off the A500 onto Gresty Road was named Jack Mills Way in his honour in 2015.

Writing in his first biography, 'Rotten: No Irish, No blacks, No dogs' which was published in the early 1990s, Lydon condemned his band mates' ill-fated meeting with Biggs and cited it for his exit.

"I thought it was a pretty shitty idea to support an ageing t........t robber like Ronald Biggs. It was appalling. I couldn't condone going down there and celebrating someone who took part in a 1963 robbery that resulted in the bludgeoning of a train driver into brain-dead senility and the theft of what was basically working-class money," he wrote.

"It wasn't as if they were robbing a bank. It was payroll from a mail train.....it wasn't joyful, witty or funny. It didn't have anything to do with what the Pistols were about before that. Indeed it seemed dour, malicious and grim. There was no humour in it. To this day I have never understood the ins and outs of it [meeting Biggs]."

No One is Innocent, the Sex Pistols' single with Biggs was a top 10 hit in the summer of 1978, by when a disgusted Lydon had changed direction with the formation of Public Image Limited (PiL).

Earning credits for a hard-edged experimental music like the LP Metal Box PiL also drew an appreciative audience for chart-orientated hits such as This is Not a Love Song and Rise before the band disbanded after their eighth studio album in 1992.

But an appearance on Country Life's butter TV ad campaign more than a decade ago provided Lydon with the opportunity to reform Public Image Ltd and tour again and two albums have flowed from his pen since.

Arguably one of the UK's most expressive lyricists, it is hardly a surprise that book writing has followed naturally; the title of his latest work 'I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right', coming from the lyrics to his 1986 hit Rise, which also included the phrase "anger is an energy" used to title the 2014 autobiography of the man once known as Johnny Rotten.

While he has performed question and answer sessions in recent years for the punk diehards at Blackpool Winter Garden's Rebellion festival, this is Lydon's first spoken word tour with Crewe among the 54 ports of call.

During the evening he will be sharing his thoughts about his long career and taking audience questions in his inimitable style.

It is likely to be as unscripted as many of his appearances on guest shows both sides of the Atlantic (he has taken American citizenship) have been, an outing on 'I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!' that he cut short in 2004 and his often contradictory political views.

In the above video clip he stresses the importance of voting, the benefits of reading and lashes out at Russell Brand and UKIP, although last year Lydon - who is a carer for his wife, Nora, who has Alzheimer's Disease - revealed he would be voting for Donald Trump in the US elections as he was disillusioned with politicians.

It could be one not to be missed and the Lyceum has signed limited edition copies of 'I Could Be Wrong, I Could Be Right' and VIP meet'n'greet packages are also available.

For tickets go here.