After being kicked out of the house at 16, he eventually got a “horrible job” at a computer-hardware company and took his place in the nine-to-five world This was exactly the motivation he needed. It helped me to understand myself.”With the tools in place, all that Preston needed now to fulfil his front-man dream was the impetus to write some songs. “Having more vocabulary changes the way you think because you have the words to describe the way you feel. After his parents split up, his father moved to France, and his mother, with whom he, his brother and younger sister lived, was wrapped up in her new lover. Preston responded by becoming “a bit of a hooligan – I was always too busy shoplifting and being a little bastard to worry about school”. But, by the age of 12, he started to get a horrible, nagging sensation that he was missing out. He surreptitiously borrowed books from his brother and began reading the works of PG Wodehouse, Will Self and Graham Greene on the sly, educating himself in language and satire.

“I read and read, and came out the other side feeling that it had improved me,” says Preston, clearly pleased with himself. Morrissey’s music isn’t punk rock in the traditional sense, but he sings about important issues and real passion comes across in his music.”But passion – soul – is worth nothing without the means to articulate it As a child, Preston had little time for school His childhood, he says was “rubbish”. “There are two types of music,” he explains, “music that has soul and music that hasn’t. If the music excites some sense that you can’t believe how much empathy you have with this person that you’ve never met, then, no matter what it sounds like, it has soul. Although different genres, each of Preston’s formative influences inspired him in the same way. “For me, hardcore is like folk music with even more passion,” he says. “It’s got energy and anger, and if you’re young and in a band, you should be pissed off because there’s lots of things to be pissed off about.”From hardcore bands such as The Misfits and Bad Brains, Preston graduated to The Sex Pistols and The Clash, later falling for the charms of Stevie Wonder and The Smiths (his band are named after the Morrissey song).

After hearing Black Flag’s “Rise Above”, Preston was smitten. Yet, when not distracted by the blasts of heavy metal, he is thoroughly engaging. Bristling with both laddish swagger and a mysterious vulnerability, he’s like the Modern Life Is Rubbish-era Damon Albarn crossed with James Dean. You could almost say that he’s genetically predisposed to being a front man.”I did always want to be in a band,” says Preston.