Last time I met Nikki was in New York.

He was playing an instore somewhere on the Lower East Side, and I went down with Kid Millions to see him perform. As usual, he was magical: his voice cracking and wavering with emotion, joking with the crowd, dressed like Johnny Thunders in his velvet sleeves and with his guitar held high. Someone offered him dope. “Sorry,” he laughed. “I only do hard drugs.” He spotted me sitting at the back, and waved his guitar in my direction, trying to entice me onstage to play a few numbers (Nikki promoted a handful of Legend! shows in the early Eighties). I shook my head. I was enjoying myself too much.

Time before, we were hanging with Mercury Rev, stealing their whiskey, reminiscing.

I was never into Swell Maps as much as some of my peers - although who could deny the exuberance of some of their more thrown-away moments of two-minute pop brilliance? - but there were a couple of Jacobites albums from the mid-Eighties that occupy a very special place in my heart.

Nikki was a true gent - too beholden to rock’n'roll mythology, for sure: too taken with the lace and frills of the early Seventies - but a true gent. He believed he was a star. It didn’t matter that only a handful of people agreed with him - he believed he was a star, and so he behaved like one, throughout his life.

You’ll be missed, Nikki.