Johnny Rotten: ‘I’ve never hated the Queen’

Former punk icon John Lydon has finally ditched the last vestiges of his anarchist alter-ego Johnny Rotten by saying that he doesn't hate the Queen – and never has.
 
Just weeks after he wrote an open letter to Prince William and Kate Middleton congratulating them on their engagement, the former Sex Pistols frontman has admitted to the Times that  his attitude had softened towards the monarch. "I've never personally hated the Queen,"  he said.
 
He went on: "I despise what she stands for. She was always too aloof, especially during the Thatcher years. We only heard later she didn’t like her. We needed more than that, baby!
 
"With a bit of luck the Royal Family will become a different thing. The Queen’s beginning to look like a worn-out old biddy and the Royal Family is a dilapidated institution, though William and Kate may serve a purpose."
 
But the punk who notoriously outraged royalists by releasing the Sex Pistols’s anarchist anthem God Save The Queen during the 1977 Silver Jubilee hasn’t lost all of his bite - he still has some choice words for Prince Charles.
 
"Charles is a man who plays Pink Floyd to lettuce: well-meaning, but with all the attributes of in-breeding and the Ministry of Silly Walks." ·