The following feature appears in this months issue of Q. A picture from Nottingham's Rock City accompanies it;

"I AM A VICTIM!"

In a rare interview, Morrissey lashes out at a High Court judge, his biographer and Britain itself.

Morrissey appears to be suffering from a full-blown persecution complex. The 40- year-old singer is still smarting from the decision of High Court Judge Mr Justice Weeks, who on December 1, 1996 ruled that Morrissey and The Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr owed the band's ex-drummer, Mike Joyce, back-dated royalties.

Two years later, on November 6, 1998, Morrissey lost a high-profile appeal against the verdict, leaving him and Marr (who'd quietly accepted the initial court ruling) with a £1 million payout to Joyce, plus legal costs which ran into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Morrissey claims, " I was a victim of the judicial system in England," and outlines a personal opinion that the highly respected judge is "completely unintelligent" and "an appalling, public menace of a justice, ...He can destroy your life."

Without producing a shred of evidence, Morrissey also argues that he was the victim of a right-wing, class-conscious plot. "You are working class and you are made to feel like a peasant. We have to realise that this judge is a Lord of the Hunt and I have in the past said things about that. I have also said things about Thatcher who more than likely appointed him. I have also said things about the royal family. This judge wanted to grind me down."

Referring to Mr Weeks' description of Morrissey as "devious, truculent and unreliable" witness, the ex-Smiths frontman makes the allegation that, "His (Weeks') final judgement went to every length to strip me down and destroy me as a human being. If I can get somebody to examine his words and the case, I believe he'd have to step down." On November 6, 1998 the appeal court dismissed Morrissey's claim that Weeks' comments were an "unjust and gratuitous attack" on his character.

Morrissey's grudge against Smiths biographer Johnny Rogan (in 1990 the Smiths frontman said he hoped the author would "end his days very soon in an M3 pile-up") is still festering a decade later. The singer discusses Rogan's research for a follow-up book in terms of an intrusion. "People say, well, he's obviously gay and loves you," he says mirthlessly.

Now living in Los Angeles, the '80's bedsit icon has withdrawn into a claustrophobic world where everyone in Britain is out to get him.

"There is an extreme disregard for anything I do in Britain. People tell me about what I've done and the legacy but I don't feel it. I'm sitting here without a record company.

I'm not desperate," he adds.