Adam Ant claimed she invented punk, with a take on clothes that still shocks more than 40 years later. Now, as Maisie Williams plays her in Danny Boyle’s new series Pistol, Jordan’s story is finding a new audience
Introducing Jordan – AKA Pamela Rooke – in his 1991 punk history England’s Dreaming, Jon Savage describes her life as “a pas de deux with outrage”. This was due to “an appearance so startling that, every time she stepped out the door, she put herself on the line”. See PVC, fishnets, rubber, XXXXL beehives, suspenders, casual nudity (she quite often wore nothing from the waist down, or no top under a mohair sweater) and a curled lip. No wonder Jordan (a name Rooke took, somewhat incongruously, from the golfer Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby) became the poster girl for a movement. Savage goes as far as to declare her the first Sex Pistol, while Adam Ant said she invented punk rock.
