‘We heard John Peel on the radio asking for a mushroom biryani, so dropped one off at the
BBC. Later that night, he played my record and I was away’
![How we made: Billy Bragg’s A New England](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a1093dfa0e5590c62b607a75e3f7b7b791beed74/0_161_4967_2982/master/4967.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=c59d56f1402b15a507ad018eec161a26)
I wrote the song in 1979 when I was 21, living in Northamptonshire and playing in the punk band Riff Raff. I was coming back from the pub one night and saw two satellites in the sky. I thought they were a great metaphor for a relationship, so when I got home I wrote down: “I saw two
shooting stars last night / I wished on them but they were only satellites.” When I came back to the song the following year to finish it, I realised I could truthfully open it with the line, “I was 21 years when I wrote this song / I’m 22 now but I won’t be for long”, just like Simon and Garfunkel’s Leaves That Are Green.