, Updated 25 May 2021, 11:58 BST
In his new autobiography,
There and Black Again, legendary DJ Don Letts documents the arc of his life, from his childhood as the Brixton-born son of Jamaican parents to his friendships with punk and reggae heavyweights including Joe Strummer and Bob Marley.
Photograph by Don Letts
When the dub-reggae scene collided with the punk in 1970s London, a new subculture was born whose influence has reverberated through the city to this day. And filmmaker and DJ Don Letts is widely credited as one of its pioneering figureheads.
In his own words, bass and reggae are “Jamaica’s greatest gifts to the world”. It’s a gift that Don a punk fanatic, too famously brought to London through his regular sets, mashing together the contrasting sounds at the then-eminent Covent Garden nightclub, The Roxy. The venue, an icon of the 1970s punk scene, witnessed the coming together of a marginalised white and Black youth a celebratory “cultural clash�
Nightclub industry gives cautious backing to rapid Covid test proposal Tom Batchelor
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The nightclub industry has given its tentative backing to a suggestion from the prime minister that rapid Covid testing should be offered to ticket holders – possibly while they are queueing – as a route to open up venues that have been shut since March.
Boris Johnson has proposed rapid-turnaround lateral flow coronavirus tests as a potential solution that would enable entertainment venues, which he described as “the toughest nuts to crack”, to reopen.
“That, in combination with vaccination, will probably be the route forward,” he told a Downing Street news conference on Monday.