JOE Strummer had just lost his aged dog Beatle on the windy afternoon of Friday, October 25 ,but he still spoke to Mono about his return to Newport.

Former Clash man Joe Strummer's fast approaching UK tour is a homecoming shebang for him and his band The Mescaleros.

After a tour of Europe had run its course and they had looked back to the British Isles, apathy fell over the group.

"The home island, for us, isn't all that great," explained Strummer. "We do much better and draw bigger crowds in America and in Europe."

His bandmates told him it was a shame they didn't have anything to come back to after their tour.

So rather than lead them back to a shivering, gig-less isle of wind and rain, Strummer decided to put on a tour.

A series of small venues, including Newport's Legendary TJ's, was booked with two weeks' notice and his band cheered up a bit.

These smaller venues should make for intimate shows. Strummer and his band's last South Wales appearance was in the Great Hall of Cardiff University which he remembers well.

"Yeah, it was a good show - lots of people from Newport were there," he recalled. The Newport show, one of ten, has added weight for Strummer as it was here he developed a taste for playing rock 'n' roll in the early 1970s.

"I was a gravedigger in this massive cemetery," he said. "But they fired me! "I had discovered that if you stuck the handles of the wheel barrow into the ground it made a very comfortable chair, which I was prone to nod off in.

"One time I awoke without a job, a P45 kinda sticking out of my mouth!" Strummer had come to the town to study at art college but was booted out for "not taking it seriously."

He crashed on many floors, a couple of nights at a time and played in bands such as The Vultures.

It was with those carcass-stripping types that he played his sole Newport gig. "The Clash never played Newport," he said. "So this is kinda my first time gigging in the city in about 30 years."

Another place The Clash, never played, says its former guitarist and vocalist, was Germany, "Not Germany - The Clash never sold a record in Germany." We couldn't get - well, we did get arrested, but it was a no-go zone for us."

The Clash ran out of steam in the mid 1980s, after which Strummer produced a few film soundtracks, including one for the Alex Cox movie Walker.

After his first solo album, Earthquake Weather, he didn't record as a solo artist or as a leader of his own band for ten years.

In this period he was recruited by The Pogues, deputising for an injured Philip Chevron, and the following year for a 'resting' Shane MacGowan.

This long association culminated in Strummer producing The Pogues' album Hell's Ditch, which was the last album recorded by the classic line-up of the group. It included such tunes as Sunnyside of the Street and Summer in Siam.

"I went to Germany with them," he said. "The Pogues are massive there. By the time we got to Germany there was, like, 10,000 at every show. I asked somebody why the Pogues were so big in Germany and they said that Hitler had killed all the folk musicians, along with all the Jews and gipsies and everyone else.

"The Germans, after the war, became very keen on folk music because they didn't have any left.

"Folk music and its attendant strains are very prized in Germany. And the Pogues are in alongside that."

Strummer's love of folk music, an influence which can be heard clearly in his lyrics, took him to the Poetry Olympics.

There he met Martin Carthy, who played at the Beaufort Theatre last week "We did a spontaneous few numbers," said Joe.

"He had a great time because we were like real loonies leaping around and it tickled him."

Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros current tour includes two benefit gigs for the Fire Brigades Union; London's Acton Town Hall on Friday, November 15, and Bridgwater's Palace on Sunday, November 17.

He was approached by a fire-service representative who was putting on a benefit in which a group of firemen was due to play.

Strummer agreed to headline the event: "I always feel as a rule of thumb that a chancellor or prime minister is going to be paying the nurses, the teachers, the firemen, too little," he said. "That's what I feel.

"They deserve dignity and not to be the subject of bargain basement dealing. "When you think of all the money the government must waste on ridiculous extravaganzas such as the Dome or just entertaining and the MPs' new office block, you release how fair they could make things."

Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros play TJ's, Clarence Place, Newport, on Saturday November 16.

It's going to be popular, so get tickets now on 0115 9129000 or www.gig and tours, or dial 01633 216608 for more information.