John Lydon doesn’t understand why anyone would “still expect” a follow-up to the sole Sex Pistols album.

The 69-year-old rock star was part of the band when they released their only record, the punk classic Never Mind the Bollocks, in 1977.

He later went on to front Public Image Ltd but insisted that a direct follow-up to that initial album was never on the cards because he had such an eclectic taste in music to start with.

“Yeah, an audience is a very demanding thing,” Lydon told Blitzed magazine.

“They’ll grab hold of you, and they won’t let go of that vision of you. You can’t live your life according to somebody else’s illusions about you. You just can’t.

“You’ve got to be true to yourself. For me, I’ve always declared I had a vast, vast record collection of music, so I was influenced in many different directions and some of them completely contradictory to each other.”

Lydon says the diversity of his musical styles is “always going to shine through in any records l’ve put out”.

“And so I’d say to those that were still expecting Never Mind the Bollocks Part 2 – f*** off you idiot. What are you not listening to?”

Lydon – who was also known by his stage name of Johnny Rotten during his original heyday – did note that his two audiences from each band have “amalgamated” in a sense even though they were separate to begin with.

No, I’m not one for staying on the first rung of the ladder,” he said.

“For a while there were two different audiences, but they kind of amalgamated, you know, in time. The hardcore softened their prejudices, and the softcore was warm and welcoming.”