“Grundy was the big dividing line in the Sex Pistols’ story. Before it, we were all about the music, but from then on it was all about the media. In some ways it was our finest moment, but in others it was the beginning of the end … In terms of the Sex Pistols having any kind of long-term future, this sudden acceleration was the worst thing that could possibly happened. I still think we’d have got really big in the end without it, but the whole process would have been much slower and maybe less traumatic. I guess it was never our destiny to be a normal band who make a few albums and then fade away. Grundy was definitely the point where everybody’s egos started to spin out - McLaren’s probably the most of all.” (Steve Jones) The episode made the band household names throughout the country and brought punk into mainstream awareness. The Pistols set out on the Anarchy Tour of the UK, supported by the Clash and Johnny Thunders' band the Heartbreakers, over from New York. The Damned were briefly part of the tour, before McLaren kicked them off. Media coverage was intense, and many of the concerts were cancelled by organisers or local authorities; of approximately twenty scheduled gigs, only about seven actually took place. Following a campaign waged in the south Wales press, a crowd including carol singers and a Pentecostal preacher protested against the group outside a show in Caerphilly. Packers at the EMI plant refused to handle the band's single. London Conservative councillor Bernard Brook Partridge declared, "Most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death. The worst of the punk rock groups I suppose currently are the Sex Pistols. They are unbelievably nauseating. They are the antithesis of humankind. I would like to see somebody dig a very, very large, exceedingly deep hole and drop the whole bloody lot down it." The band played twice in December 1976 at the Electric Circus, Manchester. Following the end of the tour in late December, three concerts were arranged in the Netherlands for January 1977. The band, hungover, boarded a plane at London Heathrow Airport early on 4 January; a few hours later, the Evening News was reporting that the band had "vomited and spat their way" to the flight. Despite categorical denials by the EMI representative who accompanied the group, the