HOW WE MET

JON SAVAGE AND MARGI CLARKE

The writer Jon Savage, 42, grew up in west London. He started a punk fanzine in 1976, and wrote for `Sounds', `Melody Maker' and `The Face' throughout the Eighties, before winning the Ralph J Gleason award in 1992 for `England's Dreaming', his definitive history of punk. He lives alone in Maida Vale and north Wales. Presenter and actress Margi Clarke, 42, was brought up in Liverpool. She began her TV career in 1978, and won the Presenter of the Year award for `The Good Sex Guide' in 1995. She recently split up with the father of her two children, the artist Jamie Reid

JON SAVAGE: Margi was my first job in television in 1978. I went up to Liverpool to work on a Granada show called What's On as Margi's researcher. We were brought in as the new talent from the punk generation, but we realised quite quickly that Granada didn't know what to do with us. This was compounded by the fact that we didn't really know what to do with ourselves. We were young, we'd just started working in the media and we saw television as this vast new playground we could have fun in. So though I was supposed to get Margi into the studio on time and make sure she was prepared for her interviews, she was absolutely undisciplinable. She'd go and get drunk or smoke a joint before an interview. It very quickly became apparent that we were both out of control; and Margi's way of doing things seemed to be a lot more fun than Granada's.

Margi was good friends with the poet Carol Ann Duffy, who was then her scriptwriter. I remember these two women checking me out rather carefully when I first arrived to see whether or not I was acceptable. We went to see Joy Division at the Factory Club in Hulme, and it was there that they somehow decided that I was okay and I was let in to their gang. I think Margi was deciding whether or not to make a move on me because, as I found out later, she rather likes a bit of posh. I remember driving them back from Liverpool to her parents' house in Kirkby. It all went a bit quiet in the back of the car: I was quite sure they were whispering about me. In the excitement of the moment Margi let rip and there was a horrible smell. I left a due pause and said: "Is that you, Margi, or is that the industrial estate?" and she looked at me and burst into laughter and that's when we knew we were going to be friends.

I've always been incredibly struck by Margi's warmth, not only in person but also when she meets the public. People respond readily to her warmth; it's a quality I admire. She also has that Liverpool thing that I envy - that incredible verbal facility and spunk. Because she has got a strong accent and she comes from Kirkby, people assume she's a Liverpool div, and there've been several attacks on her because of that. I'd like to see her one-on-one with the people who put her down. She's so smart, she'd annihilate them.

Margi comes from an extraordinary family. They're a real clan, in contrast to my family, which is very small and isolated. I started visiting the Clarke home in 1985. The first time I went, there was a party going on and when I arrived I was whisked up in the arms of Margi's sister, Mo, to dance to "Single Life" by Cameo. I went there several times and Frances, Margi's mother, would cook Sunday lunch and I'd sit in the kitchen talking to her. The television would be on in the living-room and there would be kids everywhere. I was very happy there.

What I really appreciated about meeting Margi and all the people that she introduced me to in Liverpool was the living demonstration they gave me of how friendship and solidarity work - which I hadn't really got from anywhere else. For instance, I saw a lot of Margi in 1992 when my father was dying. I came to Liverpool to retrace my father's steps, and Margi was there for me a couple of times when I was feeling really torn to pieces. She lost her mother in the last couple of years, so we both know how losing a parent can turn your life upside-down.

Margi seems to embody, to some extent, one of the things that punk was all about, which is the idea that you could have access. If you were intelligent, if you had something to say, then you could say it through punk rock - rather than by going to expensive schools or universities. So I am proud of the way Margi's made something of her life, but I don't think she has completely fulfilled herself yet. I always thought Margi was fantastic; the problem was - and still is - deciding what to do with her.

MARGI CLARKE: I met Jon when I first broke into television. We hit it off straight away. He'd got a wicked sense of humour and the poshest accent I'd ever heard in all my life. I've always liked a bit of posh. I'm a Kirkby girl, I hadn't really come into contact with people like that before, so he fascinated me. I always thought that I wanted to be where Jon was from and he wanted to be where I was from.

Jon was part of my cultural education. I left school at 15, and though I was never ashamed of my background and accent, there were big gaps. I was always reaching out for more. Jon would hit me with these massive words: like when he said he thought up in Liverpool we were the original punks, because we were more Dadaist - we really went for it. I didn't even know what Dada meant. And he told me once that I was an anarchist. I said: "What's that mean?" He said: "It means someone like you, who is a natural iconoclast." I had a vague idea what an anarchist meant, but I thought "iconoclast" meant an icon, you know, something groovy to be, but I wasn't sure so I looked it up in the dictionary. It said "religious rule-breaker" and I kept saying to Jon: "But I'm a Catholic!"

He also tried to get me into the aristocratic thing of eating Gentleman's Relish. My God, it was like shite on toast. I thought: "You were brought up on that? Didn't your mother have any margarine?"

I went to his house and met his mother. She terrified the life out of me, she was posher than the Queen. I was trying to talk posh to her and she kept shouting to Jon: "What did she say?" He's also got this wacky grandma - who's about 106 and I think was a bit of a flibbertigibbet in the Twenties - who sort of eggs him on to do outrageous things.

It was Jon who introduced me to Jamie; Jon's always there at the major events of my life. He knew Jamie from way back - he was his curator and they'd worked together with the Sex Pistols - and before we met, Jon used to tell me stories about him and say: "You couldn't handle him, Margi." It was like a challenge. He brought Jamie to my house when Liverpool were playing Arsenal, as I lived right by the ground. I was sitting on the doorstep in my rollers and peeling potatoes, looking like something from the war. I took one look at him and nearly wet myself. I just flew in upstairs to drag the curlers out of my hair.

I can ring Jon at any time and he'll help me. Me and Jamie have put him in terrible positions of disgrace. We had nowhere to stay once and we fell on the mercy of Jon. We stayed in his flat for three days, but he'd just moved in and he'd soon had enough of us - we were like termites - so he stuffed us in the back of his car with these cushions and pillows and took us to Tony Wilson's. On the way we got pulled over by the police and I was able to witness first-hand how the voice of the establishment can make officers of the law quake. I couldn't get over it, how the policeman ended up doffing his hat to Jon.

I used to owe him loads of money. At one time I was running back and forwards to Paris with Jamie, and Jon would get these frantic phone calls day and night: "Could you please wire me some money?" He hated actually giving me the money, he'd rather give you what you needed, like a bag of food - but he never let me down.

My mum had loads of time for Jon. She loved his manners; we were both brought up with the same importance attached to manners. I once interviewed Barbara Cartland and she was going on about manners and I said, "Yes, I taught my children to say please and thank you," and she give me this really dirty look and I couldn't understand what I had said. Afterwards Jon told me that before the show she'd said: "The aristocracy never say please or thank you, it's only the servants who say that." He always took the piss out of me and clued me in to these social gaffes that I was prone to make. He said once: "You're more than an anarchist, Margi, you're an accidental anarchist." He's got a point.

! Jon Savage's latest book, `Time Travel' (Vintage, pounds 7.99), is out now.