Only 14 pages into Anger Is An Energy and we’re in Dickensian territory. “It’s quite a thing to carry a bucket of miscarriage and you can see little fingers and things in it – and have to flush it all down the outdoor toilet.” This was 1960, when John Lydon was four. By 10, he had survived spinal meningitis, run a minicab office and read Crime and Punishment (he was taught to read by his mum); at 20 he was a Sex Pistol. In recent years he’s survived I’m a Celebrity, advertised butter and reformed his greatest band, the political, avant-garde Public Image Limited. There are full lives, and then there is his.

Lydon’s second autobiography after 1994’s Rotten: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs is a ripe, breathless yomp through an extraordinary life. Written “with” music journalist Andrew Perry, it reads like a stop-start entertaining pub monologue, chapters alternating between subjects and typefaces. But this is a serious book too, about how poverty and illness can create pain that can be turned into something positive, presenting a man keen to fill out the nihilistic cartoon that has persisted in pop culture.

Many recollections here are refreshing and surprising. There is Lydon’s love of oratory, his time in the school orchestra on the triangle, plus recollections of non-punk gigs he adored as a teenager (he was a big fan of Alvin Stardust). Lydon the romantic is also a revelation. There are two chapters on his partner of the past 37 years, Nora Forster (“absolutely adorable, fantastic, unlike anybody around“), plus touching passages on the death of his parents (“I was borderline pissing myself with tears”). There’s lots of gossipmonger fare too, especially on old cohorts like Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, but that’s tangential stuff. This is more a book about a deprived boy showing how ready he was to roar, and how he lit a touchpaper for others like him.

Anger is an Energy is published by Simon and Schuster (£20). Click here to buy it for £16