“I take a drink from time to time, but I’m from a heavy drinking family. I mean, if you compare me to the rest of the males in my family, they’re mostly dead!”

Ever the pragmatist, Mark E. Smith discusses dipsomania in an interview with Mark Lawson.

If you called Mark E. Smith a National Treasure he’d more than likely smack you in the face, and to be honest you’d deserve it: using such a glib turn of phrase is obviously going to agitate a dissident so long in the tooth. But there is something to be said for the motivation in issuing Smith such a prefix, as he’s been steadfast in his rejection of labels for thirty years. Forming The Fall in the mid Seventies, his atonal diatribes have underpinned one of the most diverse and consciously impenetrable bands the UK has ever produced, the list of albums almost as long as that of the personnel. He has stood at the peripherals of popular culture, piss eyed and peerless, for longer than anyone else would conceive possible and although his singularity can border on the belligerent, anyone with more than a passing interest in music will know exactly who he is, if a little unsure of why.

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