John Lydon was on the radio recently discussing the background to this song, PiL's latest, and he had mentioned it before:
“A friend of ours got himself institutionalised,” he says in an off-the-cuff manner. “In other words, they put him in an old folks’ home in Britain. Because the authorities decided he wasn’t capable of looking after himself.”
His eyes then light up, and he leers towards the camera: “Well, he certainly was because, at night, he would break out, steal cars and rob supermarkets.” Rejoicing, he exclaims: “Oh, what a fucking brilliant, beautiful spirit of independence. I’m not advocating crime at all. But there he was, and he would go back to that old folks’ home and sit in his chair in the morning and go, ‘It wasn’t me!'”