Acknowledgements

Chris Heath would like to thank the Pet Shop Boys for their help with this book, and would also like to thank the following: Michael Braun, Murray Chalmers, Rob Holden, Ivan Kushlick, Pepa Misas, Jonathan Riley, Derrin Schlesinger, William Shaw, Gill Smith, Jill Wall, Lawrence Watson and Johnny Wright.

Pet Shop Boys: A Brief History

Neil Tennant (b. 1954) grew up in Newcastle. In 1970 and 1971 he played acoustic guitar and sang in a folk group called Dust. In 1972 he moved to London to study history at the Polytechnic of North London. His first job was as British editor of the American firm Marvel Comics. He subsequently worked at Macdonald Educational Publishing (1977), ITV Books (1981) and at Smash Hits magazine (1982).
Chris Lowe (b. 1959) grew up in Blackpool. He briefly played keyboards in a school heavy metal group, Stallion, then became trombonist in the school orchestra and in a local sevenpiece jazz band One under The Eight. In 1978 he moved to Liverpool and studied architecture at Liverpool University.
In 1981, during Chris's year of work experience at Michael Aukett Associates in London, the two struck up a conversation in a King's Road hi-fi shop and were soon writing songs together. In 1983 they persuaded a cult American disco producer called Bobby O (full name Bobby Orlando), whom they idolized, to make records with them. The first result, a song called 'West End Girls', was a modest club hit. In 1984 they signed a management contract with Tom Watkins. In 1985, after lengthy legal negotiations to extricate them from their contract with Bobby 0, they signed to EMI Records' subsidiary, Parlophone Records. Their first single, 'Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money)', was a flop. The next, 'West End Girls', reached number one all over the world.
They have since released four LPs-'Please' (1986), 'Disco' (a collection of dance-floor remixes, 1986), 'Actually' (1987) and 'Introspective' (1988) - and have had twelve British hit singles: 'West End Girls' (1985), 'Love Comes Quickly', 'Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)' (a re-recorded version) and 'Suburbia' (all 1986); 'It's A Sin', 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?', 'Rent' and 'Always On My Mind' (all 1987); 'Heart', 'Domino Dancing' and 'Left To My Own Devices' (all 1988); and 'It's Alright' (1989). They have also written and coproduced: a single for Patsy Kensit- 'I'm Not Scared' (released under the artist name Eighth Wonder, 1988); two singles for Dusty Springfield - 'Nothing Has Been Proved' and 'In Private' (both 1989); and a whole LP for Liza Minnelli - 'Results' (1989). Aside from making records they have also released two video collections: 'Television' (1986) and 'Showbusiness' (1988) and have made a full-length feature film, It Couldn't Happen Here (1988), directed by Jack Bond and co-starring Barbara Windsor, Gareth Hunt, Neil Dickson and Joss Ackland.
In 1986, then again in 1987, they scheduled and subsequently cancelled major concert tours in theatres. Both times they had planned to collaborate with people from the English National Opera and both times the economics proved forbidding. Thus their only live performances before June 1989 had been at the Brixton Fridge to backing tapes (1984, six songs), at the ICA (1985, three songs), on the TV programme Whistle Test (1986, two songs), on the televised American MTV award's (1986, two songs) and at Before The Act (an anti-Clause 28 benefit at London's Piccadilly Theatre, twvo songs, 1988). In early 1989 they received an offer from a Japanese promoter, Mr Udo, generous enough to allow them to tour as they wished as long as they played venues with audiences of around 8,000. They agreed. Soon afterwards Hong Kong dates were added at the beginning of the tour and at a late stage they agreed to add dates in July in Britain.

Chapter One

In an article entitled 'Thinking the possibility of realization for their live', issue three of the Japanese Pet Shop Boys fanzine, Out of Order, chews over the Pet Shop Boys' predicament. Would they ever play live? Could they? It begins by summarizing the situation as the writers see it. The Pet Shop Boys have mentioned playing live since their inception, but to their readers' disappointment ('the resigned voice came from fans') it hasn't happened. The Pet Shop Boys are quoted as saying that their dance-floor twelve-inch remixes are their equivalent of playing live and the article deduces that 'that makes the live realization doubtful'. Their earlier theatrical touring plans are described but the commentary tartly notes 'the plan stops at thinking step, and after action doesn't reported'.
They then reveal how, in an earlier issue of Out of Order, they had polled the fans on their hopes. They were given four options: 'a) we'd like to see it immediately; b) we like to see them play in their own good time; c) we don't mind - it's up to them; or d) we don't want them to do it because, by the looks of their videos, they'd be tragic live.' Predictably the fans mainly plumped for a) or b). The piece closes with a more optimistic quote from Neil ('Mr Tennant', as they deferentially refer to him), plainly translated into Japanese and then back into English:
'Please look forward to it! We won't make it ordinally pop concert. We're planning gaudily show 'cause we want to give our impression strongly. At first, we're thinking to use theatre instead of proper music fall. It gives you different atmosphere. Well, take a look. We'll make you think our's not average concert.'
The first I hear of the tour is in mid-May when Rob Holden from Massive, Tom Watkins' management company, telephones me. The Pet Shop Boys are to tour Japan and Hong Kong in late June and early July. Would I like to come? Some sort of book perhaps? He is vague, obviously trying to do the Pet Shop Boys' bidding without being precisely sure exactly what that bidding was. I said that I was very keen.
The next week I see Neil and Chris. I have been asked to interview them, off-camera, for various Far-Eastern TV programmes to promote the tour. (The programmes would either just use chunks of the Pet Shop Boys' conversation or dub their interviewer's voice over mine.) There is a side of the Pet Shop Boys that treats explanation as a chore and a burden foisted upon you whenever you do anything. In the weeks to come Chris will claim wryly that they only decided to tour because they got bored with explaining to people why they didn't tour. Today, after the second interview, they declare that they are already bored with their spiel about it.
There are four interviews to do (two for Japan, one for Hong Kong, and one general, all-purpose one) and a long list of Japanese TV Station IDs (Chris: 'Hello, we're Neil and Chris, the Pet Shop Boys . . .' Neil: '. . . and you're watching Funky Music Tomato!' and so on). Lucy Campbell from EMI's international department tells me beforehand that they probably won't do the IDs and highlights three she'd like me to push for if possible, but they actually run through the lot without any fuss. As the camera is reset for the Hong Kong interview, Chris tells Neil, 'Apparently all our fans in Hong Kong are little girls. You'd better book your facelift now.'
Asked to introduce the interview Chris begins, breezily, 'We're currently rehearsing our show and it's going to be really good . . .'
He breaks off. 'I can't do this sort of rubbish. I'm not a salesman.'
But they soon get going, presenting a persuasive description of 'e very special show, we hope not like any other rock show'. Again and again they hammer home that the show is to be unusual: 'not a traditional rock'n'roll show which doesn't cost very much money'. They run through the costs and effort going into the backing singers, the six American dancers, the special lighting; the programming that allows them to transmit all the programmed music at the push of a button from a small computer set-up on one side of the stage; Courtney Pine, Britain's most famous young jazz musician in his own right, playing saxophone; and, most of all, the role of Derek Jarman both in shooting the films to be projected behind the performance and in directing the whole show.
'It's directed,' explains Neil, 'in the same way you direct a play or a musical, whereas a rock'n'roll show is supposed to be "spontaneous, mean", even though it's exactly the same every night.'
They harp on the differences between this and a normal rock show. Neil points out that they 'find normal rock concerts boring. Actually I think a lot of people do if they have the honesty to admit it. It's always great when the group comes on, then five minutes later you're thinking...' He mimes boredom.
'Also,' Chris expands, 'rock shows are really embarrassing. The audience can be embarrassing and the performers I find cringeworthy. You light your lighter during the ballad . . .' He frowns. 'It's the way it's meant to have some kind of importance when it evidently hasn't- that's what I find embarrassing . . . If I go to a concert and I'm genuinely thrilled or excited I'll automatically stand up and start dancing, but what you don't do is the standard thing. I think you've got to feel it. I don't think a lot of these reactions in rock concerts are genuine, either from the performer or the audience. I just think they're going through the motions.'
They explain how, to their surprise, most of the guidance they have received has been to make their concerts like everybody else's. 'There's a whole industry around rock concerts in London,' explains Neil, 'and the whole idea seems to be you do exactly what anyone else does. It took us a while to get across to a lot of people exactly how un-rock'n'roll our idea for the show was. There was a specific moment when the lighting designer realized and he was quite shocked.'
Chris says they couldn't do that sort of show anyway. 'The type of personality you have to have, I don't think me or Neil have. We're not in your Bon Jovi mould, when you get down on your knees and start shoving your crotch in the air at people. We're basically not male bimbos.'
And if they are making this effort to be different, Chris makes clear, their audience should do the same: 'I'd be very disappointed if they start going through the rock audience cliches - the cigarette lighters. I'll probably have to turn the keyboards off end tell them to stop. It's embarrassing.'
'Of course,' says Neil, who looks as though he'd be more embarrassed by Chris causing a scene on-stage than by cigarette lighters, 'I quite like that.'
In between each interview we gossip. Chris declares that the interviews are boring and that 'it'd be better if we just gossiped'.
'Yes,' concurs Neil. 'Let's just gossip about Bros.'
But they carry on none the less. Chris explains over and over about the music being generated from a computer bank. He says how this will leave most of the stage free and enthuses about how fantastic electronic music sounds played live: 'The best concert I've ever been to was Kraftwerk.'
When I ask them if they'll be playing all their hit singles Chris says, 'We haven't got enough time' and laughs. Neil explains that they chose the song list and order in a couple of hours round his flat and haven't changed it since. Chris sarcastically suggests that for his solo spot, 'Paninaro', he will split the audience into two halves 'where you get one half to singalong and then tell the other half to be louder'. When I ask about the six-track CD 'In Depth', being released just in Japan to coincide with their visit, they bluff endlessly. Finally Neil grins, the tape still rolling, and says, 'Actually I don't know what to say about this because it's the record company's idea and I have no idea why we're doing it, to be honest. Unfortunately I haven't been able to think of any rationalization whatsoever.'

During the interviews I ask them several times why they have chosen the Far East in which to tour. To begin with they mention that the offer from a Japanese promoter was the first to make touring in the manner they wanted a financial possibility. Once Neil also confesses that 'If your first concert is in London or New York I would have this paranoid feeling that they're out to knock you.' It is Chris who adds the third reason:
'We wanted to do it a long way from home in case it was an absolute disaster so no one would really know about it over here.'
'Frank as ever,' sighs Neil.
In fact the Far East is chosen by many artists to begin their live careers. It is highly lucrative, thanks to the strength of the Japanese economy and the severe exchange rate. The audiences are famously uncritical. Also, as Neil points out, it is a long way from London or New York. When the cameras aren't rolling the Pet Shop Boys slip into talking about it as if it was a remote practice, a rehearsal for an American tour in 1990.
Today however they have just been presented with a proposal for a British tour, to follow directly after the Japanese dates. They seem impressed - shocked, I suspect - by the financial terms: another two weeks of concerts would turn round a projected small loss into a substantial profit. They tell me that they're not going to accept it, but I suspect that they will change their minds. Not just because of the money, but because as the tour draws closer and the cast of performers they are assembling grows more impressive, it's obvious they're beginning to think it might be a waste, all this effort, if they don't show it off at home.
They don't mention anything about me coming or about a book, so neither do I, but in the days that follow I get promising phone calls from the management office. Am I vegetarian? Do I prefer window or aisle seats? I also hear that the British tour is happening. One morning Mark Farrow, the designer responsible for nearly all of their artwork, who works in the same office as the management, telephones me about 'the tour programme we are doing together'. Of course no one has mentioned this, but I wanted to do it anyway. Mark tells me their suggestions for the content: an interview with them, a piece on Derek Jarman, a chronology of the Pet Shop Boys and 'the Simon Frith article', an analytical piece written for the Village Voice in early 1988 which Neil wants included.
A few days later, while Mark Farrow and I are working on the programme proofs, Chris comes in. He has just been learning some dance moves at a rehearsal studio. He is working with six American dancers, brought over for the tour by a dancer and choreographer, Casper, who had worked on the 'Left To My Own Devices' video. Chris bounds around, showing off his new steps. He leans over Mark Farrow to see what he's working on. 'Neil's bloody Simon Frith piece,' he moans.

I phone Derek Jarman to interview him for the tour programme. He is in a London editing suite, finishing off the films that are to be back-projected during the show. In the background I can hear an instrumental version of 'It's A Sin' playing over and over and every now and again he interrupts a train of thought to declare that this is 'some of the best Super-8 imagery I've ever done . . . well up to scratch . . . The film is often brilliant, even though I say it myself.'
He first met the Pet Shop Boys when they asked him to direct the video for 'It's A Sin', a dark, rather confused drama in which Neil and Chris played prisoner and gaoler. 'I thought of it initially as another pop video - it always is until you meet the musicians.' He is frank that one of the main roles a tangential involvement in music has had over the years has been to keep him solvent while he worked on his own film projects (Sebastian, Jubilee, The Tempest, The Angelic Conversation, Caravaggio, The Last of England, Requiem). Though he professes to have little idea about music - 'I'm pushing fifty now . . . I live in my own mad v~orld in Dungeness' - he found them straightforward and nice. He was pleased that, having decided to work with him, they let him do what he does.
'l can honestly say, of all the music people I've worked with, they've put the most trust in me. Neil, and Chris too I think, has a knowledge of the theatre and knows that having asked people to do something you have to leave them free to do what they want to do if you're going to get good results. They seem to understand this and they seem to stick by what's done.'
They worked together again on the 'Rent' video then asked him in April if he would get involved in this tour. They had about six meetings, just throwing ideas around. He explains that the most similar thing he's done before was a modern Italian opera called Inspiration by Silvano Bussotti in Florence, but this back-projection is the first time it has ever been done with 70mm film.
It's strange hearing how he has jumped from the songs to the ideas for staging them: the process seems to be a mixture of odd logical leaps, lateral thinking and bizarre puns. 'I just improvise these things . . . there's no point in illustrating the songs.' They are simply, he explains, 'a taking-off point for the imagery'. 'Paninaro' takes its name from an Italian youth cult - his film is like 'old washed postcards of Italy, of statues and clouds and ceilings and Italian hustlers from another age'. Most of the scenic footage is from an Italian holiday he took in 1985: several of the films plunder his private film library, 400 hours of imagery ('no one else,' he murmurs proudly, 'could have done this'). There is also a Dalmatian dog in the 'Paninaro' film and from that the black-and-white polka dot motif is transposed back on-stage for the dancers' costumes.
'There's definitely an element of musical in it,' he says. 'When we came to the finale for "West End Girls" we were saying, "Well, what are West End girls? We can't put a whole lot of people in West End modern fashion - it's got to be a musical ending, hasn't it?" And the musicals that were going through our mind were things like Red Shoes from the fifties, or American in Paris ... dancers ... music ... bright, bright colours.'
He talks about the tour with a refreshing, but also rather frightening, devil-may-care 'well, it might be a complete disaster, I haven't the foggiest really' attitude. He talks of the first dress rehearsal as 'a moment of reckoning when we'll have to throw everything together'. He says he hasn't been to any rock shows recently - 'I actually rather hate crowds' - but when he has been to them he's always surprised 'how audiences accept things that look dull'. This, at the very least, will look different: 'There really hasn't been anything like this one . . . If it doesn't work, it doesn't work - we'll have a bash. That's how I think about it.
'They asked for a theatrical concert,' he concludes, 'and that's what we're doing. I suppose some people think pop music and theatre shouldn't mix but I think pop music is theatre and I don't see why it shouldn't be so. To my mind there's two ways of doing it - you either just sit there and sing on a stool and do it the simple way or you go for it.'

They finally mention to me my inclusion in the tour party ghen I go down to rehearsals in Nomis studios to interview them for the tour programme. 'You're coming, aren't you?' they inquire in a friendly but vague way, as if it was no bad thing that I was joining them, but little of their business.

I talk to Rob Holden some more times to try to sort out the details, but without result. At one stage he phones to suggest a financial arrangement suggested by the Pet Shop Boys which I agree sounds fine, but the next time I talk to him he says that when he'd tried to go through the detailed budget with them and Chris had queried the figure, Rob had had to point out that it was their suggestion. In the end nothing is arranged: no financial deal, no contract, no proper discussion of what the book might be or what they expected or what I might or might not be allowed to do, though it is tacitly understood that they will have control over the result. No one ever officially tells me that I'm going, but Smash Hits contact me after talking to EMI Records and ask me to write a piece on the first part of the tour, so I presume I must be. Anyway, I see my name on tour personnel lists in the management offices.. I have a bag number: 45. Sometimes next to my name it says 'journalist'. Sometimes it just says 'tourist'.
I invite myself down to the final dress rehearsal at Brixton Academy. There I see the show for the first time.

The synthesizer sequence which begins 'One More Chance' pumps out from the darkness. To the left of the stage flashlights shoot round. On the back screen, simple, sloping, black-and white images of tenement blocks, a New York skyline, appear. The four singers - left to right as you look from the audience: Jay Henry, Carroll Thompson, Juliet Roberts and Mike Henry - hold torches under their chins and begin singing: 'one more, one more chance'. The dancers appear: three men (Casper, Cooley and Hugo) and three women (Jill, Tracy and Robia). They throw themselves around the stage in West Side Story style choreography. From the left and right wings stride Neil and Chris. Chris is in all-over leather and wears a spherical 'ruby'-studded helmet: he looks down, doesn't smile and seems to try to look as if he's playing as little as possible. Neil wears a long overcoat; he illustrates the words with occasional exaggerated gestures.
'Opportunities'. On the screen, the first of Derek Jarman's films begins: an oriental woman with a fan and an evil, enticing stare bends her index finger in a sinister 'come hither' gesture. While the on-stage lighting has been down, Chris has taken his helmet off- he places it on the ground, next to his keyboard -and Neil has removed his overcoat to reveal a black suit studded with 'diamonds'. He is wearing a bow tie. At one point he walks near the backing singers and Mike Henry grabs a piece of cloth dangling from Neil's back trouser-pocket. As he walks away a string of four large handkerchiefs resembling American dollar bills streams behind him.
As 'Opportunities' finishes a screen is carried on and placed stage-centre. Neil disappears behind it. The orchestral beginning to 'Left To My Own Devices' swells up. Two of the dancers, Casper and Hugo, position themselves in front of either edge of the screen. Casper is dressed as a classical conductor with a baton; Hugo is in khaki military garb and beret: the allusion is to Debussy and Che Guevara in the lyrics. They move robotically, then, when the drums burst in, dance across the front of the stage. All the while clothes are tossed up on to the top of the screen. (In fact Alan, the head of wardrobe, is behind the screen helping Neil change.) Just in time for the song's first line, Neil appears in a turquoise-and-green dressing-gown with pink pyjamas underneath: 'I get out of bed at half-past ten. . .' At the end of the song he strolls off and Courtney Pine steps forward for a solo, accompanied by Chris and Dominic Clarke, their keyboard programmer, playing the chorus's chords on keyboards.
Neil enters for 'Rent' wearing a large white fake-fur coat Midway through the song he takes it off, to reveal a black-andgold waistcoat over a white shirt, and drapes the coat over Juliet Roberts' shoulders. The dancers are dressed as ballroom dancers and act out a ghostly routine in three pairs. 'Heart' begins with the backing singers scat-singing around the tune that repeats through the chorus, then a Derek Jarman film begins: first a bright pulsating light, then lots of ecstatic dancing in what appears to be a suburban disco. The camera is clearly mounted so that it swings in a circle, its subject at any particular moment dancing around with it in a wider circle. The dancers are young and old. A ginger-haired girl, almost hysterical, features most. Near the end Derek Jarman himself glides rather regally across the screen. Beneath this, on-stage, Neil acts out the song's declarations of affection with some very forrr ularized hand movements.
The stage is bare at the beginning of 'Paninaro', then out runs Cooley in a Dalmatian-spot jacket. Behind him a film starts, Derek Jarman's old holiday footage, in front of which a goodlooking Italian youth, with a broad, confident smile that shows off a glistening brace, caresses a Dalmatian dog. Cooley acts out a love scene with Robia, then Chris strides on, in pink peaked cap, sunglasses, lime-green l-shirt and jeans. He speaks a few of his lines, then dances in time with Cooley. Next Cooley does an amazing dance including a backflip, after which Chris is supposed to address the audience on his likes and dislikes (in rehearsal he says nothing). He ignores the attention of Robia and Tracy (who has joined the action as Robia's rival) and strolls off. Cooley acts a tug-of-love between Robia and Tracy, then positions himself on the left side of the stage away from both of them. They pull out knives and fight, and Tracy kills Robia. Cooley, horrified, pretends to greet Tracy lovingly but has palmed the knife Robia lost in the fight and, in full embrace with Tracy, stabs her in the back. Cooley surveys the pitiful carnage, picks up the other knife and, with great drama, on the precise beat with which the song ends, drives both knives into his stomach and buckles over, dead.
For 'Love Comes Quickly' Chris wears more casual wear (usually a purple-and-black striped Issey Miyake top) and Neil is in another suit. Blue light pulses and washes over the stage in time with the song.
'Love Comes Quickly' is followed by two completely unprogrammed songs. Two old stand-up lamps are placed either side of Chris's keyboard and Neil sits next to him on a stool. Dominic remains on-stage, playing extra keyboards. Mid-song one of the lights is swivelled round to shine on Courtney Pine, mid-stage, who solos.
During 'Nothing Has Been Proved' the set is littered with people - the backing singers and dancers, sitting on-stage reading newspapers proclaiming SCANDAL. Casper and Jill act out a scene between a proud showgirl and a cool, selfish, sharp operator. Behind them all, Derek Jarman's film plays around with images from the Profumo affair - endless pictures of Christine Keeler doctored and moved round the screen. In the end it becomes a fantastic playpen of rotating and receding colours. The song finishes with everyone leaving the stage and the dissonant acid disco of 'The Sound Of The Atom Splitting' begins to ricochet round the theatre. Smoke puffs everywhere and lights rotate not just round the stage but into the auditorium. In the actual performance a special device is fixed to the mixing desk so that the sound itself encircles the arena as if it is circling the audience. After a few minutes billows of smoke seep on to the stage and, within it, dim outlines can be discerned. The lights slowly fade with the opening bars of 'It's A Sin', revealing the dancers in huge, grotesque costumes, representing different deadly sins. One is a horrific primitive face, mostly just one huge, dangling tongue. Another is a rotund British bulldog Winston Churchill-type figure in a Union Jack waistcoat. Another has huge long pointy fingers. Another is ugly and bald and has deformed ears; it is wearing a skimpy bra and panties. Chris appears, like the singers, in hooded robes. Neil enters grasping a trident, a crown on his head, in flowing, red, almost papal vestments: at first he holds a mask on a stick over his face as disguise. In mid-song he twirls, the red cape following him round and round in a decaying spiral. Behind is a nightmarish film sequence: birds pecking away, strange, fuzzy creatures feverishly enacting mysterious rites, gluttony . .. Cut between this are two boys, wallowing in luxury, rubbing oil over each other, then kissing. The overall effect is quite shattering, quite unlike anything one's used to seeing at a pop concert.
'Shopping' follows sharply. Chris is in a l-shirt and straw hat but everyone else is dressed as city business types. Neil has a blue striped shirt and red tie and comes on talking into a portable phone. The dancers act out a caricature of yuppies. Cooley is carried about, stiff as cardboard, and then at the end moonwalks backwards followed by a spotlight.
A Spanish dancer appears on the screen, clicking her fingers as 'Domino Dancing' begins. She twists and turns to the Latin rhythm while behind her bullfight scenes are shown - smiling, heroic faces interspersed with gorings, matadors being tossed, fearful little Spaniards scurrying across the sand to someone's rescue. On-stage Neil sings in an embroidered black shirt while Casper dances a fake flamenco, then trails a cape. After one pass near the right of the stage he whips it up and Robia appears behind it. They dance. At the end strange psychedelic lights play on the screen as Chris and Courtney mess about with a strange Acid House snippet Chris has come up with in rehearsal.
As 'King's Cross' begins a black-and-white grainy film starts, footage set around King's Cross station, somehow just as sad and hopeless and beautiful as the music. Later on Chris appears in it, in scenes originally filmed for the 'Rent' video two years ago, looking joyless and resigned, a woollen hat on his head, a dufflebag over his shoulder.
The last song of the main set is 'Always On My Mind'. Neil wears leather. Behind, a paintbox of shuddering oranges and green is superimposed, near the end, by a picture first of Neil, then of Chris, first hidden by his cap then looking up to face the audience. At the very end they are shown side by side, Neil facing the camera, Chris away. They turn to face each other, stare sternly, move just very slightly, then, as the song echoes away, turn back.
Two encores are planned. First is 'West End Girls'. In true encore etiquette Neil returns in his 'Opportunities' suit. The dancers each do little solo sums, and dance around using three chairs set centre-stage. Before the second encore Neil introduces everyone one by one as they come back on to the stage, as one might at the theatre, his spoken introductions leading into the slow beginning of 'It's Alright': 'dictation being forced in Afghanistan . . .' As the song speeds up the show ends in exuberant celebratory mayhem.

The small crowd allowed into the dress rehearsal - Derek Jarman, the entire Massive management office, their press officer Murray, Chris's sister Vicki, Neil's sister Susan and his brother Simon, a few friends - applauds rapturously. Beforehand, those who hadn't seen any rehearsals were extremely apprehensive: afterwards, they are not just relieved but extremely impressed. Everyone celebrates with champagne in the dressing-rooms.
Mark Farrow gives me a lift home and on the way we stop at Neil's flat. We meant only to pick up a book, but there are a few people there, nice red wine is thrust in our direction and Neil- a little drunk and somewhat euphoric after the dress rehearsal - is in full flow, dominating the company so that it is less like a conversation, more like a performance. Just before he launches into the evening's tour de force - Neil Tennant on the subject of Cliff Richard, a rambling and deeply hilarious discourse on 'the Peter Pan of Pop' - I notice, on the table next to me, a chronicle of the Rolling Stones' 1972 America tour, Stones Touring Party by Robert Greenfield, which a friend, journalistJon Savage, has lent to Neil to get him into the touring spirit. Seeing me peering at it, Neil says, halfjokingly, that it might give me some suitable ideas. I read the flyleaf: 'its style matches the subject, the crazy exhausting enormously brutal punishing life of a rockbiz tour.' Like that? I ask.
I know little more when -the cab came to pick me up and take me to Gatwick airport, so l decide to go wherever I'm able and note down whatever I can until somebody stops me. As it turns out they rarely do, and people get used to me wandering around in dressing-rooms, at receptions, over smart dinners, in nightclubs with my notebook open, scribbling. Sometimes, when something slightly embarrassing happens, someone will triumphantly bellow, 'It's in the book.' Sometimes - not often -something will happen and someone will say, either hopefully or threateningly, depending on who they are, ' That's not in the book.' Mostly, after the first few days, no one takes any notice.

Chapter Two

Sunday, 25June 1989

In the car to the airport the tour photographer Lawrence Watson and I are entertained by a non-stop monologue of great rock'n'roll tour stories from the make-up artist Pierre La Roche. The best is the famous Rolling Stones 1975 tour when the entourage would line up each moming, backs to the 'doctor', and drop their trousers for their daily vitamin shots.
When we arrive, Neil and Chris are already there, relaxing in the first-class lounge. They are always famously early on occasions like this - one of their frequent gripes is that, as pop stars, they are frequently assumed to be incapable of simple timekeeping. After some persuasion - for only Neil, Chris and their assistant Pete have first-class tickets - we are all ushered in. 'Isn't it exciting?' says Neil, greeting us, meaning the tour. He browses through the small booklet giving all the dull day-to-day touring details and mutters, 'How real it makes it all seem.' In the book is a list of rules set by tour manager, Ivan Kushlick. Rule 2 reads: 'Fines will be imposed at the rate of ,(1 per minute by me by my watch for persons late for calls, departures etc. All proceeds will be donated at the end of the tour to the Lighthouse Trust (a charity).' When Pierre sees this he goes round telling people that it is their duty to be late: 'It is such a good cause.'
Chris enthuses about 'the rave' called Sunrise that he and Pete went to the previous night. He describes their journey through the countryside, joining a long convoy of cars, 10,000 searching for a venue whose location has only been revealed that evening They had danced and talked all night, only interrupted by the announcement in the middle of the night that the front gate had had to be sealed because it was being attacked by people from a rival firm with axes. It had been brilliant, they gush, when the doors had been opened before dawn and the party had stretched over the fields as the sun rose. Chris has had two hours' sleep; a deliberate ploy, he says, to make him sleep on the plane.
Rob Holden diverts us by revealing his dream the previous night. Massive also manage Bros and he had 'woken up' - still, in fact, in his dream - to discover that he was not, as he would normally expect, in bed with his girlfriend but with Bros singer Matt Goss. 'I thought, "What on earth can I do?"' he splutters.
Chris moans about how useless the shopping is here in Gatwick. Last time he was here he wandered round for half an hour vainly 'looking for one of those women doing questionnaires' so that he could register his disgust. Today he gives them another chance, but they have neither Polaroid film nor the Victor Bokris biography of Andy Warhol that Neil has recommended to him. Instead he buys The Orton Diaries. Neil chooses the book on the Australian 'dingo baby' case, recently filmed as A Cry in the Dark which he has recently seen, and enjoyed.
As we queue for our flight a middle-aged businessman recognizes Neil and engages him in conversation. It is only a few weeks since Chinese troops killed thousands of students in Peking's Tiananmen Square and the British media has been full of the fury and resentment in Hong Kong towards the British government. In 1997 Hong Kong will be ceded to China and Britain is seen as washing its hands of the responsibility for the people there. The crisis has badly affected the Pet Shop Boys ticket sales: people have other things on their mind and aren't disposed to go out and enjoy themselves. The Hong Kong promoter, Andrew Bull, had suggested, a week or so earlier, that the Pet Shop Boys publicly dedicate the concerts 'to democracy'. They decided that it would be a cheap and tasteless stunt and refused.
'Is there much resentment towards the British?' Neil asks.
'Not yet,' says the man. 'There may be, but not yet.'
'A bottle of Jack Daniels!' hoots Chris, propelling himself into the Duty Free shop. This is part of a familiar, long-running Pet Shop Boys game-Let's Play At Being Tragic Rock'n'Roll Stars. The point of it, apart from being funny, is of course to emphasize how far removed they really are from all that. 'He always buys skincare products,' predicts Neil, accurately.
As Chris pores over the cosmetics counter a trickle of fans recognize him and ask for an autograph. Dainton, the security man -soon to be described, with some exaggeration, by one British magazine as a 'six foot six Mike Tyson lookalike' intercepts them and hands them a postcard of Neil and Chris, ready signed. Throughout the tour he will make them do brief signing sessions to replenish his stock.

On this plane there are nine of us: Neil, Chris, Pete, Dainton, Pierre, Lawrence, Rob, Lucy from their record company and myself. The others - Ivan, the six American dancers, the four backing singers, Courtney Pine, Dominic the keyboard player, the wardrobe department etc. - are flying separately on a flight that stops over in India. We were all originally booked on that flight but Neil and Chris refused to do the extra take-off and landing.
They are both dreading the flight. They've had bad experiences in the past and hate flying. Chris has even investigated the possibility of getting to Hong Kong by rail across Russia but went off the idea when he discovered that it took days and was 'really boring anyway'. In fact the flight passes quietly, without incident. They sleep through most of it. When I interview then: in Hong Kong for my Smash Hits piece, Neil mentions the dream he had on the plane - driving down the Fulham Roac on the bonnet of a car, going to see Stephen Ward, the man who committed suicide in the tragic aftermath of thc Profumo scandal. Several weeks later he tells me that this wasn't the whole story. He had also dreamt that Chris had been on top of the car as well, and as they sped down the road Chris had been trying to push Neil off. The first time I interviewed the Pet Shop Boys was for their first Smash Hits cover feature in February 1986. 'West End Girls' had just been number one and they were recording in Advision studios in the West End, putting the finishing touches to the follow-up, 'Love Comes Quickly'. Neil had left Smash Hits less than a year before. (I joined the staff during his last few months as deputy editor and worked there full-time until December 1987.) When Neil worked there, Chris would often come in near the end of the day, hanging around, sitting on the photocopier, talking, dancing to records.
Before the interview we sniggered at the tacky pomposity of the BPI Awards on the studio TV: the next year Neil would be there, accepting the best single award from Boy George after being pressurized into turning up. Chris stayed at home and watched it on TV.
We went to the nearby health food snackerie Cranks to talk. The tape begins with Chris announcing, 'Actually I may not answer some questions because . . .' long pause - '. . . I might not have an answer.'
It seemed a bit preposterous interviewing them, difficult to take them seriously as pop stars, and they seemed to find it all a big strange too. In the few other interviews they'd done already they'd messed about a lot. Their last Smash Hits piece- involving them talking as they normally would, about the rest of the charts - had helped earn them the Sun nickname THE RUDEST MEN IN ROCK. In another article they had lied about their ages, taking five years off each for a laugh - a lie that would chase them round for years. They joked about the tragic nature of the interviews they'd been doing. 'Someone asked us,' said Neil, "'did you always dream of being a pop star?" It's the favourite question I've been asked. I love the idealism of it.'
And he said?
'I sniggered.'
'In Europe,' he said, 'they endlessly ask you what it feels like to have a number one record, and of course it feels like vaguely nothing. It feels like having a cup of tea.'
I mentioned that Chris is getting a reputation for looking miserable - only just beginning then, thanks to some remarkable surliness on Top of the Pops and in the 'West End Girls' video. 'Well, it isn't just an image,' said Neil, 'I think Smash Hits readers should be aware.'
They announced that they are preparing a live show for that September, 1986.
'It's not going to be a rock show,' claimed Neil.
'It'll be very theatrical,' amplified Chris. 'Entrances and exits. If we have backing musicians they're not going to be on-stage. They'll be in the orchestra pit.'
Neil said they have a long-term plan 'which everyone thinks is a joke but is serious'. It is that 'The Pet Shop Boys are going to carry on but we are actually going to leave being the front men of the Pet Shop Boys and we're going to change the lineup every year or so. Suddenly we've got four sixteen-year-old boys as one Pet Shop Boys and the next thing you know it will be two thirty-five-year-old Elaine Paige types. We'll be fed up with it by then. We'll write the music and do all the nice things like go to bed really early. We won't have our photograph taken or be asked why we're called the Pet Shop Boys. We can just make the records. And make lots of money.'
To which Chris muttered, 'We want to write stage musicals'; odd because they still say that now, but it is usually presented as an ambition of Neil's. After, I talked to them separately, about each other. Neil says Chris is moody and picks his nose too much, is funny, hates people smoking, being embarrassed and being pretentious, is better-looking than Neil, and has got a not-very-nice flat. Chris says Neil is brainy, talented, stylish, generous and musical ('I'm going to be dead nice actually'), a bit bossy, too tidy, too obliging, a good judge of people, hates incompetence, is quite snooty, has a more homely flat and has an Action Man dressed in combat uniform on his bookshelf.
Neil says that when they get their money he'd like to buy a flat of his own. Chris says he'd like a car, 'but I don't feel like spending money because it just feels like I'm frittering it away'.

Monday, 26.June

Before getting off the plane Neil and Chris make themselves presentable; a photo opportunity has been arranged at the airport. They are directed down a walkway and stand as ten or fifteen local photographers snap away. Then they walk back up the walkway, as this isn't the way we'll actually leave the airport. We take some other stairs to the car pick-up point and the photographers, for whom this is obviously a slightly farcical routine, join us there and snap away some more.
The following day a piece appears with a walkway photo in the main English-language newspaper, the South China Morning Post. Under the scrupulously accurate headline 'Pet Shop Boys arrive for gigs' they are welcomed and the promoter is quoted as saying that a fortnight earlier they had considered calling off the concerts because of the political situation (not true, at least as far as the Pet Shop Boys were concerned). Andrew Bull then adds: 'But we decided to go ahead because we thought Hong Kong needs something like this. It needs a lift,' as though a couple of verses of 'It's A Sin' wil1 be adequate compensation avenue of moored boats. The sea has a stagnant smell. As we sit there, smaller boats pull alongside and we are offered a choice of as yet uncooked foods, paraded before our eyes in full gory biological horror. We indicate our choices and a succession of squashed ducks, squid, sea shells and noodles are cooked, then handed up. When we have finished and pushed our paper plates piled with empty shells and bones to the centre of the table a waitress daintily stacks them, lifts them off the table and then, with a deft flick of the wrist, tosses them into the water behind us. Soon we are surrounded by a flotilla of plates and prawn shells.
To go to the toilet you simply climb through a curtain to the back of the boat where some timber has been removed and pee into the water. Chris, alone, decides that he doesn't like the sound of this and clambers on to a moored boat and disappears to find some greater privacy. The dancers, getting restless, start tipping one of our boats from side to side. 'Don't rock the boat,' titters Neil.
Then a music boat arrives: musicians, a singer and a list of songs that it hands up to us as if it were the pudding menu. Someone plumps for 'Sealed With A Kiss' - number one in Britain for Jason Donovan as we left - and a sweet Cantonese version follows, chased by an impenetrable distant relation of the Beatles' 'Can't Buy Me Love'. Then Pinkie, one of the wardrobe department, jumps up. She is dressed - as she will be on every day of the tour - in amazing pink finery and is immaculately made up; when she lived in Los Angeles she was on an agency's books as a Betty Grable lookalike. On this tour she will be forever stared at and often assumed to be the star of the party. The Pet Shop Boys take a strange pride in the attention she attracts, though once, when Murray, their British press officer, suggests that they are photographed with her, Neil, only halfjokingly, snaps, 'We're not in the business of making Pinkie a star, you know?' Tonight, hearing it is someone's birthday, she serenades the boat with a deliberately fragile and trembly Marilyn Monroe version of 'Happy Birthday'.
Afterwards we try some discos called Hot Gossips and Boobs. Everyone is drunk; everyone dances. Most people slink away from Boobs at about 3 in the morning but a few stay. One of the crew is enticed to take a girl back to the hotel despite warnings from a sober Dainton that she looks like trouble. He is woken at 11 o'clock the next morning by a call from the venue. He had been due there hours before. The girl has gone. So has Ł400 in various currencies and Ł60 of spirits from the mini-bar in his room. He suspects he was drugged and later it turns out that he isn't the first to be similarly duped. 'I don't even remember what she looked like,' he sighs.

Tuesday, 27June

The Pet Shop Boys don't give press conferences as a rule. They're happier doing what interviews they do face to face with individual journalists, aware that it's the only way they can encourage articles about them to be more than general information and vague chatter. Press conferences are one of the great modern media tools, by which, under the presence of giving access and information, a lot of people learn a very little. But at the start of their tour they are keen to show willing, especially as the two Hong Kong concerts are far from sold out, and so at 11 o'clock this morning about fifty journalists and a couple of TV crews gather in one of the hotel's reception rooms. Many of them are from Chinese-language papers and speak little English, but there is no interpreter. Some gold and platinum discs are stacked in the corner, but a few minutes before the Pet Shop Boys appear they are mysteriously carried away again. The Pet Shop Boys are to sit at a table and speak through microphones, connected to the sort of battered old speaker usually seen at school discos, but for the first ten minutes of the conference it refuses to work, and as they talk an elderly man in overalls beavers away wearily trying to fix it. There is lighting too - one intense yellow-white bulb - but before they arrive there is a bold leer-puff and it blows. Neil and Chris appear about twenty minutes late - slightly outrageous rock'n'roll behaviour to the punctual locals. Perhaps they imagine that the hectic business of being a celebrity has delayed them. In fact Chris has been sorting out his dry-cleaning.
After the photographers have been allowed a couple of minutes Andrew Bull introduces them. 'On behalf of myself, EMI . . .'
The list goes on and no one pays much attention.
'. . . Levi's . . .'
The reaction is instantaneous.
'Levi's?' exclaims Chris, furiously. The Pet Shop Boys are deeply particular about sponsorship. In principle they oppose it completely, but like many artists outside their home country they relax their rules a little. Nevertheless they are still painstaking about what they will or will not allow, and Levi's smallscale sponsorship of the advertising of the Hong Kong leg of the tour has been very carefully negotiated - no direct or public endorsements, no banners at the concerts and so on. And most certainly no announcements like this at their press conference. They are livid. For the moment they merely fume and meaningfully exchange 'there'll be hell to pay for this' looks.
'I want a retraction,' Chris spits afterwards. Neil looks at Chris in utter disbelief. A retraction? They have just been publicly associated with Levi's in front of a nation's press and Chris wants 'a retraction'.
'I want one thousand dollars,' says Neil.
For the rest of their visit the promoter will hear of little else. He has almost certainly, they speculate, 'made promises he couldn't keep'.
'I don't know why anyone wants to do sponsorships with us,' Neil says, 'because you get nowt in rcturn. You get absolutely nothing. Literally nothing. You're not allowed to meet us or anything.'
It's a policy that - in theory at least - they take to extremes. Though Neil is wearing a pair of black Adidas training shoes that he was given by the manufacturers in Los Angeles, as a rule they say they'd rather not accept things. Chris typically says that if they were sponsored by someone whose products he already used, he'd stop using them immediately.
'There's no such thing as nothing for nothing,' sighs Neil.
'I don't like anyone to feel they've got a hold on me,' agrees Chris. 'They always want something.'
'The Pet Shop Boys,' announces Ricky Fueng, head of EMI Records in Hong Kong, introducing them a second time, 'are one of the biggest artists to emerge, after Madonna, in Hong Kong.' This is something that we shall hear again and again during our stay, that in Hong Kong the Pet Shop Boys are 'second only to Madonna'.
Once Ricky Fueng sits down there is silence. Everyone waits for everyone else to ask the first question.
'Where's Rick Sky then?' asks Chris. Rick Sky is the main pop writer on the Sun and over the last couple of days they have been speculating whether he, or one of his ilk, will turn up and begin hounding them in search of scuzzy stories. They are relieved that he isn't, though I suspect they're also slightly disappointed, because they thought a Fleet Street contingent would be there anyway.
Eventually the questions start, to begin with all the, obvious ones about the tour, why they chose Hong Kong to start in, how the show will be and so on. Neil plays his role as diplomat on these questions, patiently talking through the explanations that the two of them are already long bored with, while Chris fidgets and occasionally scowls as if to say, 'Well, this is dull, isn't it?' The press conference has been going less than ten minutes and Neil has just tried to explain their success in the Far East (an earnest account of the popularity of 'European dance music' here followed by the observation 'It's always difficult to explain your own popularity. Someone told me that because our first album was called "Please" everyone thought we were very polite') when Chris first says, 'Is that it then?'
He perks up when the questions get more interesting. As the minutes pass one journalist with a Liverpool accent more or less commandeers the press conference as a private interview. He has read Annually, a Pet Shop Boys annual that I had written with them the previous year and which had been photocopied and given to all Hong Kong journalists for biographical information, and refers to an article where they list and comment on their ten favourite records as of the summer of 1988. He reads out part of Chris's approving comments on Kylie Minogue's 'I Should Be So Lucky': 'I like the bit where she goes "I-I-I-I-I-II-I-I should be so lucky" and I just love the line "I should be so lucky, lucky lucky lucky". If that's banal it's a strength. It's just a mark of pure genius.'
'Arc you being serious,' he asks Chris, 'or are you taking the mickey?' He is cockily confident it is the latter.
'No, I'm being serious,' answers Chris truthfully. 'It's like my favourite line in that other record is "uh-uh-oh".' That other record, after some discussion, is identified as Paula Abdul's 'Straight Up'. 'That's a classic line as well because it's a nononsense . . . it's just pure ecstasy.'
A little baffled, the journalist nods and turns to Neil. He ren~inds Neil that he likewise raved about the original-cast recording of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady.
'Shame on you,' laughs Chris, turning to Neil.
'Rex Harrison speaks rather than sings,' says the journalist earnestly. 'I was wondering if you'd taken that singing style into your records.'
Neil looks pleased as punch by this question. 'Actually no one's ever picked up on that before, but it's true. I've always liked stage musicals and I think you'll see the influence of that on Thursday night. Rex Harrison does have a speaking singing voice and I think songs like "Opportunities" have the same kind of recitative quality.'
He has earlier observed that the first three songs ('One More Chance', 'Opportunities' and 'Left To My Own Devices') share this quality. This isn't entirely by chance. Though they are both appalled at the suggestions that their failure to tour before has been because of stage fright - the unwelcome implication being that their normal reticence isn't for a reason but is just timidity - it is true that Neil has been worried about his voice. As he had put it back in England, 'The good thing about the first three songs is I don't really have to sing.'

Neil: We were always going to get another singer. I was only singing as a holding operation. In fact at one point we thought about asking Jimmy Somerville to sing with us, because we saw that video he was in, that famous gay video.
Chris: Revenge Of The Teenage Perverts.
Neil: He sang a song on it ('Screaming') that ended up on Bronski Beat's first album and we thought then, because Chris vaguely knew him, that we might ask him to sing because we thought he was so good.
Chris: How fortunate we were.
Neil: Exactly. That wouldn't have lasted. But I became the singer by default. We often used to discuss having a singer. When we went to see Sharon Redd at the Embassy Club there were these two black girls singing along who were a real laugh and we nearly asked them, but we decided not to.
When did you stop looking?
Neil: When we started making records. Then it was too late. But I never liked my voice.
Did you change your mind when you heard it on record?
Neil: It just seemed too late.

The questions turn back to the show. Will they dance?
'I do a bit of a dance routine,' nods Chris, 'which is dead good.'
Neil explains once more about the Los Angeles dancers. 'I just sway in front of them,' he says.
Someone asks how much of the show is programmed. Perhaps the majority of large pop shows these days have a lot of programmed material: the standard answer to this question is to mutter that a couple of things are but that it won't affect 'the live feel'. -
'Virtually all of it,' chirps Chris. He painstakingly explains how the music is generated live on-stage from pre-programmed linked sequences that trigger computer-memorized banks of samples, talks about how this means that the sounds are firstnot second-generation sounds as they would be if they were on tape and how they could change an arrangement whenever they want to, and about how the best thing about this is that it brings on to the stage the very same technology that they used to make records in the studio. It's an impressive, coherent speech and one of which no one seems to take a blind bit of notice. Later when they write reviews, favourable or not, to a person they mention 'the Pet Shop Boys' backing tapes'.
'I can't really think of anything like it,' says Neil, asked once more to pontificate about the show. 'Maybe the Grace Jones One Man Show . . .,
'But Andy Warhol did things in the sixties with the Velvet Underground,' objects the journalist with the Liverpool accent.
Neil takes this objection seriously. 'That was in a more experimental way,' he counters.
So is it, the journalist responds, a show with much room for audience participation or is it purely a spectacle for people to view? Neil turns to his side. 'Chris?' He is perhaps unwilling to choose an answer to this as he knows that Chris has been declaring for weeks that if their concerts turn into chummy clichéd participation affairs where people wave their hands or punch their fists or - the worst sin of all - hold up flickering lighters during slow songs he is to storm off stage. But his response is conciliatory.
'Do what you want to, I suppose,' he grunts.
Do they expect to see the stadium rockin'?, the journalist persists.
Neil wrinkles his face, disturbed by the terms used. 'I don't know about "rockin'",' he says, carefully pronouncing the offensive word as you would pick up something rather unpleasant and put it by the side of your plate, 'but I hope they'll be moving slightly.'
Have they got any guitars on stage? they are asked.
'Don't be ridiculous,' Chris huffs.
Several weeks later, after this response has been quoted in Smash Hits, they print a letter from an Alison Taylor, objecting to this:
'. . . Chris explains "don't be ridiculous!" Oh, very sorry, sir. What a ridiculous notion right enough. Guitars are dreadfully unfashionable, aren't they? Best just stick to being a crap twinkling synth duo because it's so very "eighties", early eighties, to be precise. Plus you can't play a guitar with one finger, can you? . . . what a pillock!'
When he reads this, Chris is upset. At the time his comment about guitars gets a laugh and he is asked to explain further.
'Just because of its rock'n'roll connotations. I don't like the look of them either.'
A lot of people, continues the Liverpool accent, have criticized lyrics like 'We're S-H-O-PP-I-N-G ... we're shopping' for being too banal. Neil looks a little parked. 'Shopping' is actually a relatively straightforward anti-privatization song. 'Well,' he sighs pointedly, 'they've also been criticized for being too intellcctual 'Finally the Liverpool accent lunges at the conclusion he's been edging towards throughout the press conference. 'Is the whole thing tongue in cheek?' he asks. 'A lot of it seems . . . you are perfectly aware that the pop business is a very one-dimensional one, that it's very easy to influence people ... but on another level what you do does seem to verge on the pretentious. What is the Pet Shop Boys' view on this?' In other words are the Pet Shop Boys, as is often assumed, more often by critics who like them than by those who don't, just making pop music as some sort of superior, clever clever, ironic joke, forever secretively tapping their noses to those smart enough to be in the know?
'Well,' says Neil, 'firstly the Pet Shop Boys genuinely love pop music, which makes them quite rare in the music business. The music business itself, particularly in Britain, tends to despise pop music. So if Chris says in an interview that he genuinely likes a Kylie Minogue record people assume that he's taking the mickey for some reason, whereas we appreciate the real ecstatic response that a really good pop or dance record can generate, and I think that's probably our favourite thing about pop music.
'There's also a kind of assumption that if you're writing pop music it's not an important kind of music, whereas rock music -you mentioned U2 earlier - is perceived as being an important kind of music. And I don't really like the idea of people projecting themselves as being important humanitarian figures, which is the tendency for rock personalities nowadays. At the same time it doesn't mean that when you're writing a pop song it can't have some kind of serious meaning, and if people want to discover that for themselves that's great. At the same time if they don't want to . . . if they don't notice it . . . I think that's great as well, because they're just responding to pop music in different ways.
'Having said that, I think that's one of the reasons why the Pet Shop Boys have a strangely wide audience. In Britain, for instance, we get the whole spectrum from primary school children through to people's parents and kind of ... NME readers and all the rest of it. So, although we present ourselves in a kind of pretentious way sometimes I don't think we're really at all pretentious. I think we're one of the few honest groups in our approach that there are nowadays, because I don't think many groups nowadays are the remotest bit honest. I think there's a lot of hypocrisy in the rock business which you don't find in the pop business ... in pop music. People now pose as humanitarian figures -they're all Mother Teresa of Calcutta or someone, and at the end of the day they're only pop stars, normally singing fairly uninterestingly banal things.'
There's little obvious interest in what Neil has said from his audience and none of the above is printed in the newspapers the next day.

Neil: For eight or nine years all pop music lived in the shadow of punk. Punk was the first time for a long time that music popular pop music- came out that had an ideology to it, that said it was about something, not just entertainment. And the New Romantic thing was just an extension built out of it they took certain punk attitudes and made it more fun or glamorous. Groups like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet and Culture Club wouldn't have existed if punk hadn't existed.
But they had the ideology that persists now, didn't they, that music wasfor entertainment?
Neil: No, I don't think so. Boy George was a mass market creature and he was a man who wore women's clothes. I think that was a very powerful thing for teenagers. At the very least it makes them more broadminded. And the idea of Culture Club, as a mix of cultures and sexuality, of male and female, was a very strong idea. It was basically an intellectual notion, if maybe a feeble one. Nowadays you get a group like Wet Wet Wet and they just want to be 'quality'. It's like the mid-seventies, when all anyone tried to be was 'quality'.
So what do you think is the implication of just being 'qualify'?
Neil: It means they have no aspirations whatsoever beyond immediate consumerist ambitions.
And does that change the audience that listens to them?
Neil: I think it does. Apart from anything it's larger now.
Are you determinist enough to believe that pop music actually creates an audience with the same values that it espouses?
Neil: No. Actually I think it's the other way round. I think the values of the people tend to create the pop music that, at the end of the day, they like. What people don't want to have thrust at them nowadays - almost for the first time in the history of pop music - is aggressive sexuality of any kind. If you look at pop music nowadays it's almost totally sexless. Look at Jason Donovan. Bros are the first group to be sold on the size of their crotches for a long time, but they are kind of sexless too, because Matt tells everyone how he doesn't have sex. It seems to me it's all got Doris Day-like.
So where has the ideology of Doris Day pop comefront?
Neil: I don't know really. I think it comes from people's aspirations being totally consumerist nowadays. People want to be like their parents. This is the first generation for ages who wants to be like their parents. That, by the way, involves being quite a nice person - it doesn't necessarily involve liking Mrs Thatcher. This girl who writes to me says she's going to university and she doesn't want to go somewhere too far away from home. It's a generation that isn't rebelling. To be honest, people coming to see the Pet Shop Boys aren't making a rebellious statement on any level. Some of them might be a bit, because there's a side to us a lot of people don't like: the notion that we never smile, the way we behave on television . . .
Though of course that's also a large part of your commercial appeal.
Neil: Yes. It filters through to the audience and once people know what you're like they want you to always be like that. But we were always under pressure at the start, from EMI and Tom, to be more . . . nice. And we deliberately took care to be the opposite.
What do you think about all this, Chris?
Chris: I like to do something that I feel like . . . if someone might want you to do something I'll automatically do the opposite. People have got to like it or lump it, really. Anyway if we were to contrive looking . . . you know, bouncing up and down, happy, good-looking pop stars . . . it wouldn't work.
Neil: One of the things the Pet Shop Boys are always trying to do is always to be mass market without watering down anything we've ever done, without 'selling out' or whatever. I still have the sixties idea that you can 'sell out' and I don't regard the Pct Shop Boys as having sold out to get where we are now. I don't think that we've fundamentally watered down anything we've wanted to do to make it palatable to people.

What, the Liverpool accent would like to know, do the Pet Shop Boys think of Sting's work to promote opposition to the deforestation of South America?
'Actually as it happens I think what Sting's doing about that is very good,' says Neil, 'and the reason I like it is, as he said himself, he hasn't got a record out about it. Also, as it happens, I think he's done a lot to publicize that.'
So if they were asked to play a concert with him to spread the word would they do it?
Neil and Chris exchange dubious glances. Their answer is perfectly obvious-no. But how can they explain this? Neither of them answers for a while, then finally Chris speaks.
'We're not a live band really.'
Therc is confused laughter. The next day's South China Morning Post opens its report of the press conference by saying, 'It's a rare old thing when a pop act promoting a forthcoming concert describes itself as "not a live band, really".'
The press conference closes with the first question for some time from an oriental journalist. Are they serious, he asks hesitantly, about the clothes they wear? Again there is a silence as they try to restrain themselves from giggling-somehow this question seems incredibly funny. Afterwards they worry that, after waiting so long for other people to join in the questioning, they seemed to be ridiculing the question, but a sensible answer is beyond them. Chris turns to Neil.
'Are you serious about those shorts, Neil?'
Neil is wearing knee-length Indian-style shorts from Emporio Armani that fade in colour towards the knee. 'I don't know really,' he confesses.
It seems a good moment to finish. 'Is that it then?' askes Chris again. It is.

Chapter Three

We convene in Neil's room. It looks over the harbour. 'You've got a brilliant view,' grumbles Chris. He mutters that Neil always gets the best view. They briefly reflect on the press conference, as if it were a necessary chore to be rid of so that they can get out and enjoy themselves.
'When the going gets tough,' they say - Chris begins but by the fourth word Neil has joined in -'the tough go shopping.'
They have heard that Hong Kong markets do a good line in cheap fake Rolex watches. It is a fabulous opportunity to make Bros - who are consumer addicts in general, designer watch fetishists in particular - very jealous.
'I'll phone up Matt and say I've got three Rolexes,' decides Chris.
'I'll phone up Luke,' trumps Neil, 'and say, "I've got two Porsches and I can't even drive."'
Their banter is interrupted by the arrival of Mr Fueng. Their refusal to accept their Hong Kong gold discs in public has ruffled some feathers, but as a compromise they have agreed to accept them in private and so here, in Neil's room, the redundant presentation takes place. They are given platinum discs for 'Actually' and 'Introspective', gold discs for 'Please' and 'Disco'. As they pose for photos with Mr Fuena and the discs Chris conducts a dialogue with the rest of us in the room. He suggests that in all photos from now on they should use cardboard Pet Shop Boys cut-outs. 'It'd look the same in the pictures. We should leave them down in the hotel lobby for people to have their photo taken with.'
'That's a brilliant idea,' exclaims Neil, Mr Fueng all but Forgotten. 'We'll do it at wembley -People can have their photo taken with cut-outs of us.' They instruct Rob to arrange it.
'The trouble with all these things,' says Pete quietly, shaking his head, 'is that they never actually happen.' And, indeed, it never does.
Chris turns back to Mr Fueng and now that the diplomatic duties are over amiably chats with him about computer technology. He raves about a new IBM computer. 'It's orange,' he proclaims, leaving no doubt that its orangeness is a highly important quality, 'and it slides up.' He notices me laughing at this and addresses me sternly. 'If something looks good,' he proclaims, 'it usually is.'

'We've got to get rid of them,' fumes Chris.
There is a problem with the security people laid on. They are young, mostly British, sporting blue suits and premature moustaches. 'We don't like the look of them,' says Neil. The feeling we all have is that they're far more likely to inspire or invent trouble than to shield us from it.
Rob is dispatched downstairs to lay them off. We wait by the elevator on the thirteenth floor. Chris says he doesn't want to come down until the security people have actually gone. 'I want the lobby cleared!' he laughs.
In the minibus Ivan tells Neil and Chris about the unhappy fiasco of the drugged crew member.
'You can get that disease here,' tuts Neil, 'where your click swells up like a cauliflower. Apparently.'
Chris chews over the story, settling on the detail of the Ł500 lost. 'Not our money?' he asks.
Everyone roars at Chris's misplaced concern. Neil lampoons his reaction, replaying the conversation: 'Ivan: "They murdered him and took ten pence of your money." Chris: "Ten pence!!!"'
We stop at an electrical shop where Neil buys a Polaroid camera: 900 Hong Kong dollars.
'We're S-H-O-PP-I-N-G,' sings Chris sarcastically. 'Is it really banal?' he goads Neil, mimicking the Liverpool accent at the press conference. Neil says nothing. 'I like your answer,' Chris continues. 'Some people say our lyrics are too intellectual . . .' he roars with laughter.
By now the shop assistants have recognized that there are pop stars in their midst and ask them to pose with the staff for a photo. 'That's $50 off,' says Neil, and jokes whether he should negotiate for a bigger discount in return for introducing the concert as 'In Association with Carlton Cameras'.
We drive off. Everywhere there is building work surrounded by bamboo scaffolding, a simple lattice of bamboo poles. It looks incredibly flimsy and unsafe - but also to our eyes mysterious and rather wonderful against the otherwise modern buildings. 'Maybe we can patent it,' murmurs Neil, though he doesn't explain what he means.
Everyone takes Polaroids of everyone else. Neil has not washed his face since the press conference and says, 'I'm the only person who wears make-up for snaps.'
They discuss where to shop. Someone suggests the Jean Paul Gaultier shop.
'The problem with Gaultier,' frowns Neil, 'is that you look like Bros. Whenever you go into a Gaultier shop it's like Matt's wardrobe.' Bros, two twins, Matt and Luke Goss (a third member, Craig Logan, has recently left in inauspicious circumstances), are the biggest teen stars Britain has seen for years. They share the same manager as the Pet Shop Boys: Tom Watkins. The Pet Shop Boys are forever talking about them.
'Tom reckons we're obsessed by Bros,' says Neil.
I say that Tom has a point.
'I'm always obsessed by the current teen idols!' shrugs Neil. 'I was obsessed by the Bay City Rollers.'
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe met on 19 August 1981. Chris thought Neil looked brainy 'because he had glasses on' (these days he wears contact lenses). Neil thought Chris was a little mad 'because he laughed a lot'. They talked about music. Neil liked wordy rock music by people like Elvis Costello, which Chris viewed with suspicion, and Chris liked 'Body Talk' by Imagination, which Neil thought was dreadful, but they also liked a lot of the same things. Chris began dropping round to Neil's flat.
What did you say to each other when you first met up that led to you writing songs together?
Neil: I can't remember us having any specific dialogue. It was more ad hoc. It was a gradual thing. I had a synthesizer and Chris used to come round and eventually we started writing a song. (To Chris) Can you remember?
Chris: I'm sure you didn't say, 'Let's write a song.
Neil: I don't think I did either.

Chris: You played me a cassette of something you'd done.
Neil: Yeah. In 1981 I made a demo tape in a recording studio in South London. I'd started writing songs that were slightly punky because it was that sort of era. I went to an audition once, in 1978 or 1979, from an ad in Melody Maker to this bedsit in Clapham and the bloke was dead impressed and said, 'You should get your own band.' Then my brother Simon was always saying, 'You should do something with these songs,' and eventually I got a bonus from work and went into this demo studio with Simon and his girlfriend Sarah. One song was called 'The Taxi-Driver' - that was the popular one -and then there was one called 'She's So Eclectic' and another was called 'The Man On The Television'. The chorus was 'There's a man on the television/I don't want a television'.
Chris: You just played me one.
Neil: It was 'The Man On The Television'.
What was it like?
Chris: It had a good bit in.
'We're S-H-O-PP-I-N-G,' sings Chris sarcastically. 'Is it really banal?' he goads Neil, mimicking the Liverpool accent at the press conference. Neil says nothing. 'I like your answer,' Chris continues. 'Some people say our Iyrics are too intellectual . . .' he roars with laughter.
By now the shop assistants have recognized that there are pop stars in their midst and ask them to pose with the staff for a photo. 'That's $50 off,' says Neil, and jokes whether he should negotiate for a bigger discount in return for introducing the concert as 'In Association with Carlton Cameras'.
We drive off. Everywhere there is building work surrounded by bamboo scaffolding, a simple lattice of bamboo poles. It looks incredibly flimsy and unsafe - but also to our eyes mysterious and rather wonderful against the otherwise modem buildings. 'Maybe we can patent it,' murmurs Neil, though he doesn't explain what he means.
Everyone takes Polaroids of everyone else. Neil has not washed his face since the press conference and says, 'I'm the only person who wears make-up for snaps.'
They discuss where to shop. Someone suggests the Jean Paul Gaultier shop.
'The problem with Gaultier,' frowns Neil, 'is that you look like Bros. Whenever you go into a Gaultier shop it's like Matt's wardrobe.' Bros, two twins, Matt and Luke Goss (a third member, Craig Logan, has recently left in inauspicious circumstances), are the biggest teen stars Britain has seen for years. They share the same manager as the Pet Shop Boys: Tom Watkins. The Pet Shop Boys are forever talking about them.
'Tom reckons we're obsessed by Bros,' says Neil.
I say that Tom has a point.
I'm always obsessed by the current teen idols!' shrugs Neil. 'I was obsessed by the Bay City Rollers.'
Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe met on 19 August 1981. Chris thought Neil looked brainy 'because he had glasses on' (these days he wears contact lenses). Neil thought Chris was a little mad 'because he laughed a lot'. They talked about music. Neil liked wordy rock music by people like Elvis Costello, which Chris viewed with suspicion, and Chris liked 'Body Talk' by Imagination, which Neil thought was dreadful, but they also liked a lot of the same things. Chris began dropping round to Neil's flat.
What did you say to each other when you first met up that led to you writing songs together?
Neil: I can't remember us having any specific dialogue. It was more ad hoc. It was a gradual thing. I had a synthesizer and Chris used to come round and eventually we started writing a song. (To Chris) Can you remember?
Chris: I'm sure you didn't say, 'Let's write a song.'
Neil: I don't think I did either.
Chris: You played me a cassette of something you'd done.
Neil: Yeah. In 1981 I made a demo tape in a recording studio in South London. I'd started writing songs that were slightly punky because it was that sort of era. I went to an audition once, in 1978 or 1979, from an ad in Melody Maker to this bedsit in Clapham and the bloke was dead impressed and said, 'You should get your own band.' Then my brother Simon was always saying, 'You should do something with these songs,' and eventually I got a bonus from work and went into this demo studio with Simon and his girlfriend Sarah. One song was called 'The Taxi-Driver' - that was the popular one -and then there was one called 'She's So Eclectic' and another was called 'The Man On The Television'. The chorus was 'There's a man on the television/I don't want a television'.
Chris: You just played me one.
Neil: It was 'The Man On The Television'.
What was it like?
Chris: It had a good bit in.
Surrounded by lots of bad bits?
Chris: No, there was a good bit . . . a special bit.
Neil: It was like the Clash or something. That's what it was meant to be like.
Chris: It didn't sound like that.
Neil: No, but that was the starting point. It was just a guitar and me singing.
Your Billy Bragg period?
Neil: Yes, it was very Billy Bragg. Me and an acoustic guitar. I'm not embarrassed about these songs. Anyway, I played one to Chris and maybe the idea came up that we should write a song, though I don't think it was as communicative as that, was it?
Chris: No, it just happened.
Neil: We'd go to the pub.
Chris: The Chelsea Potter. (Laughs.)
Neil: There we'd probably drink three pints of beer - maybe I drank Pils and Chris drank pints. Anyway, then we'd go back over the road to my flat and Chris would start doodling on the synthesizer. We'd write songs and play them to friends sometimes. They were intrigued.
How did you start talking about music in the first place?
Chris: Well, all I really had to talk about was music.
So you weren't lookingfor someone to write songs with?
Chris: No. I think Neil had been in a way. But we never talked in terms of forming a group. In fact I still don't think that way. It's never been like that. Quite often you get accused of sitting down - the journalist and the architect - trying to think of some masterplan. It was never ever like that. It was pure enjoyment. We've always said in interviews that we make records to please ourselves, and we still do.

We pass Arsenal Street. Pete and Dainton cheer. They both live in North London and support Arsenal. Early this summer Arsenal won the Football League championship with a goal against Liverpool in the last minute of the last game of the season and Dainton could be seen on TV, one of the celebrating mob. The cheers turn to boos as we pass the Prince of Wales building.
'They're everywhere,' scowls Chris, meaning the royal family. The Pet Shops Boys are not fans of the royal family.
'You'd think we were in a Crown Colony,' says Neil sarcastically.
The Prince of Wales building is square, drab and undeniably ugly.
'What a carbuncle it is,' sneers Chris.
'I presume he's approved it,' says Neil. He adds, outraged, that he has heard that these days if you want to put up a major building in London you must informally present the plans to Prince Charles, a pre-emptive move to head off future criticism.
Today's excursion is, in fact, partly inspired by an architectural motive for, as well as shopping, we are to visit the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Completed in November 1985 to the designs of architect Norman Foster, it is one of the landmarks of modern architecture. Chris had studied the plan for it in his architectural days and in one of the telephone interviews they did as pre-publicity for the tour he claimed that it was his desire to see the actual building that prompted the choice of Hong Kong as the site of their first concert. The bank's management, flattered to read this, subsequently contacted Mr Bull and through him extended an invitation to a private guided tour.
We are all expecting a building that towers gloriously over its overawed little neighbours, but it is actually smuggled within a jumble of hi-tech buildings. It looks nothing very special at all.
'It's a bit drab,' Chris sighs unhappily.
'It's getting the thumbs down,' echoes Neil.
'We've come all this way, just for this,' harumphs Chris.
'The tour's off,' declares Neil, matter-of-factly.
The disappointment heightens when we see the Bank of China next door, which dashes upwards, a topsy-turvy pile of equilateral triangles by 1. M. Pie, the Chinese-American architect who built the Louvre's glass pyramid. Chris is far more impressed. 'I love the geometry.'
In the open plaza that runs beneath the Hong Kong Bank we meet our guide. It's like a school trip - brochures are shoved into our hands and she proudly gestures at the escalator that rises out of the plaza into the bank's underbelly: 'the world's largest unsupported escalators'. We are whisked below to the bank vaults where only Neil and Chris are allowed inside the bullet-proof glass screens. They sit framed by the circular opening and as Dainton lifts Pete above the glass surrounding to take a photo armed guards look on twitchily. We are shown a bewildering spaghetti junction of tracks that spread throughout the building carrying sealed boxes, then we're led to a lift and ascend to level 42.
'Level 42,' guffaws Chris. The guide looks puzzled.
We walk round a dining-room that ends in a semi-circular glass window with staggering views both across the bay to Kowloon and up the hills to the richest Hong Kong properties, where - it is pointed out - the head of the bank lives.
'Did anyone fall off while it was being built?' Ivan asks.
The guide shakes her head. She explains that one person died in a fire during the demolition of the old building on this site, one person died in construction and one person was electrocuted.
'Nobody fell then?' confirms Ivan. He seems disappointed: a building this tall and no one has fallen off it . . .
Neil and Chris are ushered towards the visitors' book. There is no suggestion that the rest of us are invited to sign. The last signature is for the 'Taunton girls' school hockey team'. The guide proudly flips the pages back to where Princess Anne - a page to herself- has inscribed her name. The Pet Shop Boys decide that they too should have a page to themselves. Chris carefully reproduces a logo that was devised years ago. Often it is accompanied with a drawing of the two of them, their heads in a box, Chris wearing a cap covering his eyes, his mouth downtumed, but this time they simply add the date and sign. Once he has finished they consider whether it looks right.
'Do you think it should have a line over the top?' asks Neil, thoughtfully. If they're going to sign this book, it's going to look fabulous. Chris considers the suggestion, then vetoes it.
Moving off, they reappraise the building.
'Absolutely fantastic,' says Neil, who seems to have changed his mind.
'Disappointing,' murmurs Chris.
'Mmmm,' concedes Neil, swiftly persuaded. 'Not one of your best, Norm.'
'I'm gutted,' says Chris. 'I was so looking forward to it.'
'It's very nice,' says Neil, vacillating. 'But I don't really like modern architecture.'

When you began writing songs did you make jokes about appearing on Top of the Pops?
Neil: No, that seemed inconceivable. At the same time I always thought there was definitely something there and I was always keen to carry on. Chris knew things about music that I didn't know. I'd written loads of songs before, but the existence of a bass-line had fundamentally never really occurred to me.
Were you less concerned about carrying on, Chris?
Chris: Well ... (shrugs) ... if you're sitting in someone's room messing about on a synthesizer you're not really thinking about Top of the Pops, are you?
On the contrary, I think a lot of people are.
Chris (surprised): Are they? Well, something like that never occurred to me. Even when we recorded with Bobby O I didn't think that. I knew Jimmy Somerville slightly and he went on Top of the Pops and even watching him I didn't ever think that we would.
Neil: Eventually we'd written so many songs and some of them we thought were good. One of them, incidentally, is on Liza Minnelli's album ('I Can't Say Goodnight'). We were particularly impressed by a song we'd written called 'Bubadubadubadubadubadum'. It sounded a bit like early Depeche Mode. Once we wrote a song and Chris said he didn't think the lyrics were very good - he couldn't work out what they were about and that had an effect. Because I used to write deliberately impressionistic - or whatever word you want to use -lyrics and Chris thought we should write direct lyrics, about sex or something like that.
Chris: I can't remember saying that.
Neil: Well you did.
Chris: But your lyrics are pretty obtuse anyway.
Neil: Yes, they've got more obtuse really. They've gone back the other way. But it had an effect then. We wrote 'Jealousy'. Chris wrote the music in Blackpool and gave me a cassette and I wrote the words and sang it to him and we both thought it was unbelievably fantastic. We also had a song called 'Oh Dear'. When Chris lived in a house in Ealing they used to like that one. He used to play it on the piano.
Chris: It was dead funny. What were the lyrics?
Neil: The tune sounded like the Specials and it went:
I was walking down the high street in the middle of the night
Someone caught my eye and I nearly died offright
Crossed the road to whisper something secret in my ear And now I know I'll never be the same again
Oh dear
(They both collapse into hysterics.)
Still on the 42nd floor we make our way outside and saunter along hi-tech walkways. Polaroid cameras go crazy.
'I've taken a happening one!' Neil exclaims, brandishing an image of angular metal shapes and blue sky. 'It's a Depeche Mode album sleeve called something like "The Technological World".'
Chris takes no notice. He is photographing small design details on the handrails and the floor tiling. 'I don't like the height,' he mutters. 'I'm always having nightmares like this. I'm up this thing and I'm going "Help! get me off!" and I'm waiting for a search party and sometimes they don't come and I fall off. Which,' he adds succinctly, 'is crap.'
We take the elevator down to a level only 170 feet above ground. We stand at a balcony and beneath us, inside the building, a huge atrium falls away. The room is curved and mirrored - throughout the day the mirrors adjust their angle automatically so that the maximum intensity of natural light is reflected down on those working below. We are quietly impressed.
At either end the metal vertical supports that hold the building are connected by cross-bracing in the shape of an 'X'. Each has a long window box running beneath it, greenery draping from it. It turns out that 'Norm' made a gaff here. The shape 'X' is extremely bad luck for the Chinese and the only antidote is thc colour green. Chris tuts. 'He overlooked something quite important there.' Chinese culture is full of such pitfalls for the innovative architect. I. M. Pie's Bank of China building is, I later learn, considered to be misconceived on a much more fundamental scale, to have 'unfavourable fengshui'. Triangles are never used in Chinese architecture because the apexes are believed to deflect evil spirits in the direction of onlookers -those in nearby buildings have apparently taken to putting cacti and spirit mirrors in their windows to ward off the bad vibes.
The debate on the building echoes on.
'It's not as imposing as I expected,' admits Chris. 'It's all very grey. It's a bit over-the-top. More science fiction than hitech. It seems like typicalJames Bond.'
'Well,' says Neil. 'The basic premise of hi-tech is a fiction, isn't it?'
The argument carries on for days. Can a building ever really be determined by its function? (In the end they agree it cannot.)
They discuss the Lloyd's building in London.
'The thing is,' says Chris sadly, 'that Norman Foster and Richard Rogers delight in architecture. They're quite rare in that respect.' It doesn't take much imagination to realize that when he says this he's not just talking about how he feels about architecture. One wouldn't be unjustified, for instance, in taking that sentence and exchanging 'Pet Shop Boys' for 'Richard Rogers and Norman Foster' and 'pop music' for 'architecture'. 'One of the reasons they don't do much in England,' Chris continues, 'is that no one in England is prepared to put that confidence in modern architecture, particularly when you've got Prince Charlcs at thc helm . . .'
This, I mutter, is almost a parody of what some people think a Pet Shop Boys tour should be like: sitting around earnestly juggling intellectual notions about architecture.
'Actually,' says Neil, 'it's probably me who would spend more time studying architecture than Chris.'
'Yeah,' agrees Chris. 'I prefer to live it, rather than study it.' This is said to sound preposterous.
'I like modern stuff,' he says, suddenly serious again. 'Everything I like is modern. Neil tends to like old stuff. He likes modern as well but I'm more interested in it. Looking round cathedrals!' he splutters to Neil, as if this was the most ridiculous pastime he could think of. 'Neil can wander round all the cathedrals that there are on the planet. To me they all look the same.
Chris's flat has white walls, polished wooden floors, simple modern furniture, modern art; the latest brilliant twelve-inch dance record booms out from the record player. Neil's has dark old paintings, religious statues, gothic revival furniture, shelves of hardback books, carpet; in the background a classical CD plays

We go shopping. Brenda, Andrew Bull's assistant, who is showing us round, leads us into an upmarket arcade, looking for the Issey Miyake shop. From about forty feet away Pete spots some sunglasses at the back of a shop called The Temptation Boutique. They are Porsche Carrera ski goggles, just one thin horizontal tinted strip. Chris whoops with excitement and tries them on.
'You've basically got to get them, haven't you?' he asks himself rhetorically.
'It's a photograph,' confirms Neil. The Pet Shop Boys are constantly on the lookout for clothes that constitute 'a photograph'; some of their best photographs work around pairs of glasses Chris has found.
These cost $470 - about Ł44 This is almost pathetically cheap for a viable fashion item.
'It's a snip,' says Chris, buying them. They won't reappear for the rest of the tour.
While he is paying, Pete sidles over to a watch display. He has something on his mind - back in London he has been giving advice on a watch that Chris might like and the one he has suggested is here on display.
'Chris!' he says, beckoning him over. 'That'd really suit you, wouldn't it?'
Chris considers this and shakes his head. He points to the one next to the one Pete had pointed out. 'I like that one better.'
Understandably I assume that this exercise has been a disaster, but Pete has a sneaky smile on his face. He explains that he knew the best way to find out was to point at another watch- the alternative Chris had suggested was the one Pete knew he'd like.
The in-store muzak is a cheesy selection of instrumental melodies from The Sound Of Music. It inspires an animated discussion of the musical's merit. This is no quickly improvised kitsch banter - Chris only recently went out and bought the soundtrack on CD (disappointing, he later admits: 'better as a video'). They discuss the highlights. Neil suggests 'I Am Sixteen Going On Seventeen'.
'Oh,' says Chris, 'but what about when Christopher Plummer sings "Edelweiss"?'
Neil tells the assembled company how he has heard that The Sound Of Music is a centrepiece of family life in the Lowe household. 'The whole Lowe family - en masse, including Judy the dog - bursts into tears,' reports Neil.
Chris is happy to confirm this. 'That and The Waltons,' he nods.
We find Issey Miyake but it is a women's-only branch. We walk off, discussing how we all share the same pathetic habit of saying 'thank you' at the wrong moments, for instance when we give someone something. We also say 'sorry' when someone steps on our foot.
An old woman sits begging on a concrete walkway. Chris, up ahead, quietly slips her some money.
'It does pony a bit in Hong Kong, doesn't it?' he says when I catch him up. 'Someone told me it meant "fragrant water" in Chinese.'


You must get asked to do a lot of thingsfor charity.
Neil: I don't know. Rob always makes us sign things when we come into the of fice, which he'll endlessly send off to garden fętes. You get thousands of things like being asked to be on Greenpeace albums, but I think they're just using you.
Chris: I think it's bad that everything depends on charity.
Neil: That's what I think, totally.
Chris: There should be no need for charity.
Neil: Live Aid had that negative effect that it reinforced the whole charity thing.
It's the privatization of charity really, isn't it?
Chris: Exactly. Not only do you have to pay less tax, but you feel good by giving money to charity at the same time.
Neil: And that's the whole point, that you feel good.
Chris: No one should have to think about charity. Everything in the whole world should be taken care of by government.
Neil: I suppose that's not what most people want.
Chris: Well I do. I don't want to feel good giving to charity. I think I should be forced . . . it should automatically come out of your pocket.
Neil: Society should get together and sort out these things. If I was blind I'd be really pissed off having to get hand-outs from charity.
Chris: And then it's nauseating - people who do a lot for charity get commended and everyone gets patted on the back . . .
Neil: . . . and get awards. It's all bound in with the establish meet. They'll all get invited to the Queen's garden parties because they've done something marvellous. They've all been Governor General of Mauritius or done something for charity. And everyone in show business is supposed to do this. It's an unwritten rule.
Chris: The Rotary Club! It's right-wing people cutting taxes then having these big massive posh dinners where they do something for charity and all make themselves feel good and cleanse themselves.
Neil: And normally it's so they can get to meet celebritiesthat's the other thing. They can get to meet Ken Dodd because they've given a Variety Club sunshine bus.
Chris: It's so vile. It's so pathetic and petty.
But of course it's always very easy for people to present your viewpoint as meanness.
Neil: We're not mean, but a lot of people in the public eye want people to think they're a wonderful person. We have never set out to make people think that we're wonderful
pople. Quitc the reverse in many ways. We've never set out to make people think, 'Aren't they warm ... generous ... they give such a lot.'


It is hot, we are sweaty and the shopping is unsuccessful so we dccidc to take tea.
'How about the Mandarin Hotel?' suggests Brenda.
'Is it snooty?' asks Chris.
'I like snooty places,' Neil reminds him.
On the stairs up to the hotel lounge a waiter stops us and theatrically frowns at Neil's shorts. (He has changed since the press conference: these are simple, blue and knee-length.) The waiter says he will have to ask for special permission. After a long wait, during which Neil is approached for autographs by several members of the hotel staff, permission is refused. The assistant manager comes up and takes great and obvious pride and pleasure in turning us away. As we leave, Dainton overhears as the assistant manager walks back towards the reception and the receptionist eagerly asks him, 'Did you manage to get the tickets then?'
Outside Brenda addresses the furious party. 'Do you still want tea?'
'We're English!' hoots Chris. 'We want tea and sandwiches!'
The incident has enraged them both. Neil, as Chris teasingly reminds him, is a big supporter of dress codes but he is incensed by the petty delight the assistant manager took in turning us away. A few days later I sit him and Chris down for a taped interview for a piece I am writing on the tour for Smash Hits magazine and the fury is still obvious.
'I'm famous for getting annoyed by petty figures of authority,' he reflects. 'It's like when I go through customs I almost tremble with rage that I have to do it, because I hate them so much. I went through once and the man was convinced I had drugs on me. He was going through everything and I said, "I know what you're looking for and I haven't got anything. I don't take drugs." He said, "Is that so, sir? It's just that you look rather nervous." And I said, "It's like, you know, when you see a policeman you feel guilty?" and he said, "Oh, do you sir?" I felt like hitting him.'
Funnily enough the customs person had been right about one thing - he had been nervous because when the case had been opened he'd realized that sitting on the top were a brand new pair of expensive American training shoes that he'd been given and hadn't declared.
'The Mandarin Hotel person annoyed me because I personally felt we were quite nice and signed autographs for the whole staff. It's not like we walked in wearing football kits. What really got me was the way he spoke to me. He took pleasure in it and he had this smile on his face when he said it. I felt like kicking him in the teeth, to be quite honest.'
Later on in the trip our travel plans separate and I don't see Neil for a couple of days, during which I fax my copy back to Britain. There is another sentence he has said, in the heat of the moment, about the shorts incident and next time I see him the very first thing he says-it has obviously been on his mind - is 'You didn't put that bit in, did you?'
I confirmed that I had, though I can't see why he is so embarrassed about it.
'I knew that you would,' he says, with considerable annoyance, but said no more on the matter.
He didn't ask me to change the article, but the next time I talked to Smash Hits I mentioned, knowing the article was too long anyway, that if it was easy it might be better if they took that out, but if they couldn't, or didn't want to, then it would be no problem. As it turned out they took this as a firm request and - as I would have - rather resented it but removed the phrase.
Later I was surprised to discover that Neil had expected the phrase to be removed for, at the hotel reception when I picked up a fax from Smash Hits and muttered something about 'bad news' (about an entirely different matter), he immediately snapped, 'Oh no, don't tell me they haven't taken that bit out.'


'Tea and sandwiches' are suspended while we shop a little more. Neil tries on a multicoloured silk jacket, marked down in the sales from $13,800 to $8,300.
'It's a bit Coco the Clown,' advises Chris.
'I'm not paying 58,300,' agrees Neil.
Finally we successfully adjourn to a rather sweet English-style tea room. The assistant manager of the Mandarin Hotel is far from forgotten. In the show, during Chris's one vocal performance, 'Paninaro', he is scheduled to ad lib a speech about things he doesn't like. He has so far failed to do it in rehearsals, but there is a rough script - endlessly chuckled over and revised -that goes 'I don't like The Cure . . . I hate U2 . . . and I think Malcolm McLaren is a prat.' It is now decided that for the Hong Kong dates an extra line should be added: 'I hate the assistant manager of the Mandarin Hotel.'
This decided, Neil quizzes Brenda about the political climate in Hong Kong. Is everyone planning to leave before 1997, when the country is Chinese once more? She says that she is - in 1991 she emigrates to Canada.
Her choice of destination inspires Neil to tell of their Worst Hotel Experience Ever. One night in Toronto, having flown through a storm, they checked into their hotel suite and went downstairs for dinner. Returning to their suite they discovered that all Chris's belongings had been hurled into the sitting-room of the suite and a camp bed set up there, while an actor had been checked into Chris's room and was busy shaving in Chris's bathroom. 'I went downstairs,' says Neil, 'and just went bonkers.'
This is but one of a repertoire of promotional trip stories that they will tell, given the chance. Like all modern pop stars, whenever they release an album they're pressured into travelling the world for months, simply to 'promote' it: 'servicing countries,' as Kylie Minogue once graphically described it. They groan about Germany, where they once had to mime 'Love Comes Quickly' in a swimming-pool, surrounded by German teenagers dripping wet, Neil complaining, 'We're not supposed to be a flamin' pop group.' Then there's France, where they were once asked to mime on the radio - 'mime on the radio!' -and they agreed, because the show was broadcast live in front of an audience, but then finally blew a gasket when the producer insisted that they rehearsed their mimed performance. They both now agree that 'the age of promotion is over'. EMI, they point out, fly people round the world to speak to Paul McCartney or Duranduran in London; so from now on EMI can jolly well do the same for the Pet Shop Boys.

Whether by accident or design the music playing in the café is the Pet Shop Boys 'Actually' CD (probably design; the waitress later brings the CD sleeve to be signed). Neil cocks an ear to Dusty Springfield's performance on 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?' and mutters, more to himself than to anyone else, 'God, Dusty sang this well, didn't she?' Then he looks at a Polaroid of him taken earlier by Pete. 'More chins than the Hong Kong telephone directory,' he sighs.
He congratulates himself for his lack of success shopping today. 'I feel quite virtuous that I haven't bought anything,' he admits. 'I usually feel terribly guilty at this point.' This is a pose that he will build on in the days to come and he will relish announcing frequently that these days he, Neil Tennant, is now of ficially 'post-shopping'.
As we leave the café, the waiter makes a V sign, palm towards us and says 'good luck'. Neil pontificates on the symbolic meaning of this while we descend the stairs. He says he believes it's an ancient Chinese sign for good luck and asks Brenda whether this is so. She looks a little confused and carefully explains that, no, it's actually a sort of hippie symbol meaning peace.
We have sent the minibus home and so we take the Star Ferry that runs between Hong Kong island and Kowloon. On our journey we continue to enjoy blowing the Mandarin Hotel incident out of all proportion. It is now decided that, as well as denouncing him from the stage, the most fitting means to repay the assistant manager is to invite him to the concert and then turn him away at the door.

Neil: After about a year we decided to make a demo so I got the Melody Maker and looked up the cheapest demo studio we could find. It was Ł6 an hour.
The decision was purely made on the basis of cost?
Neil: Totally.
Chris: I couldn't believe how expensive it was.
Neil: I paid for it with my redundancy money from Macdonald Educational. It all cost about Ł32 - a lot of money then. We took our equipment - Chris's trombone, my synthesizer and a little Casiotone -but Ray Roberts (the studio owner) had a much better synthesizer and a piano so we used those. We recorded 'Bubadubadubadubadubadum', 'Jealousy' and 'Oh Dear'. At that point we decided we needed a name so we could send the tape to people and we chose West End. Actually we always thought it was a really useless name.
What did it mean?
Neil: We just liked the West End of London. We used to spend a lot of time wandering around there.
Was it from the song 'West End Girls'?
Neil: No, that was written slightly later, I think. Maybe the idea of 'west End Girls' came from West End. I can't really remember. Anyway, Ray Roberts liked our songs and liked us, so he said we could use his studio for nothing if he could have a share of our publishing. Chris was back in Liverpool and he'd come down at the weekends and we'd go to Ray Roberts' studio on Friday and Saturday night. That was when we really started writing songs in an organized way. Then Chris heard 'Passion' by the Flirts (written and produced by New York producer Bobby O) and made me come over to his flat to listen to it. Our first Bobby O-influenced song went 'Life's hard/it's all you've got/and all you get/is a broken heart/it's. . .' (here he sings a jaunty instrumental passage). The Bobby O influence definitely focused us. We weren't just writing songs any more.

Neither Neil nor Chris have grasped hold of the idea - assumed by most of those around them - that there ought to be some kind of consistent hierarchy in operation and so tonight there is no method to their invitations to dine with them in the hotel's smart Italian restaurant. It-is simply those people who they have bumped into over the preceding hour: Dainton and Pete, myself, Lawrence, Casper and Jil1. Another dress code altercation has been headed off by an agreement that we eat at a table hidden round a corner and that we will enter the restaurant by a back route; consequently throughout our meal we don't see a single other diner.
The evening's brief briskly decides itself: celebrity gossip. Neil and Chris are fascinated by gossip. Perhaps one could say they are fascinated by the way little-tattle about the famous reflects on the contradictions of fame, the tawdry preposterousness that reveals itself when you dig away into celebrity life styles. Perhaps they just like a good gossip. It's nothing new: at Smash Hits, Neil - having called the office to attention and offered a disclaimer that 'it's probably not true, mind you' -would always be the first person to relate some new 'fact', to toss round news of scurrilous associations between people and to declare 'the shame . . .'.
As the starters arrive Chris mentions their dinner with 'Frank' - Sinatra, that is. It was while they were making Liza Minnelli's LP - she broke off recording to appear alongside 'Prank' and 'Sammy' (Davis Junior) in 'The Ultimate Event' (as it was billed) at the Royal Albert Hall. On her table alongside them was Bob Hoskyns ('just like Phil Collins,' says Chris), on Sammy's table was Lionel Blair, on Frank's Michael Caine and Roger Moore.
Neil tells of the night he met Prince in London at a private party after one of his 'Lovesexy' concerts. Considerably worse for wear, Neil resolved that Prince, he of world-famous reserve and master of the one-word answer, was not going to get away with the silent mysterious routine tonight. In the end they chatted about religion and pop music, Prince's show and 'It's A Sin'.
They ask Casper about Michael Jackson. Casper and Cooley, as legend (and the tour programme) has it, taught Michael Jackson how to moonwalk. Cooley has been muttering to people how Michael also wants to learn his two new moves, a backflip and a gravity-defying trick where he appears to fall sideways, his body vertical, then bounce back upright off his left ankle. Cooley claims that he refuses to teach Michael any more.
All this is recapped - as in 'well, this is what we know already' -by Neil. Casper and Jill exchange glances that clearly mean both that Cooley is prone to exaggerate and that he shouldn't talk so much anyway. Nevertheless Casper slowly tells his side of the story. Michael Jackson saw them both on the American TV dance show Soul Train and had also seen an advert Casper had done in which Casper had been imitating Michael. He had asked the two of them over and they had subsequently spent two weeks together. The next time they met Michael blanked him.
Casper entertains us with stories which Neil counters with the tale of when the Pet Shop Boys went to the premičre of Michael Jackson's Disneyland film Captain Eo. To their horror only soft drinks were offered. 'We expected champagne. Champagne only, please.' They were ushered into an open-top vintage car and then suddenly found themselves without warning being driven down Main Street, Disneyland, through crowds of spectators, while a booming voice announced to the public: 'From London, England, please welcome the PET SHOP BOYS!!!' They felt conned.
'Was that the A party or the B party?' asks Casper. Apparently there were two - one posh, the other posher. Casper was invited to the B one. Chris insists that theirs must have been that one too.
'Ours can't have been that bad,' Neil points out. 'Jack Nich olson was there.'
Casper talks about Courtney Pine. He has been astonished to learn in the last day that the saxophonist on stage with him is fairly famous.
'I had no idea,' he confesses. 'I was going to say, "Do you want to come and do this gig with me?",' thinking, he explains, that he would be doing Courtney a major favour.
After the meal Neil pours champagne in his room as a nightcap and chatters on . . . about German journalists who ask why German music doesn't sell in Britain (to whom he and Chris always answer, 'Because it's no good. I tell them they make good cars. All Britain is good at these days is pop music') ... arriving in New York, hearing records like 'Planet Rock' and seeing people breakdancing on the streets . . . how he writes songs from chord changes and how Chris writes from single notes . . . about Depeche Mode and how he thinks Martin Gore writes weak lyrics, but how wonderful 'See You' is ... about Japan's suicide culture. He repeats a strange story he was once told. A couple's daughter idolized a Western actress, and felt herself so in love that she killed herself. The parents asked the actress to attend the funeral. They said it would be a great honour.

Chapter Four

Wednesday, 28June

This morning is the final rehearsal. The bus to the venue is due to leave at 11.30. Courtney Pine, the last of several Rule 2 violators, slides aboard at 11.41.
'First fines of the tour!' crows Ivan.
'How much? How much?' demands Carol to Courtney, but he doesn't reply, just flashes his inscrutable, shy half-smile at her. It's an expression we shall all get used to. At the back of the bus they discuss a jazz notable, James Moody, whom they saw play here last night.
'He was saying, "Y'all can sing?" and just staring at my tits,' laughs Juliet.
'He just got married,' says Courtney.
Before we leave, Ivan calls Neil to say that their special car will be leaving fifteen minutes later than scheduled.
'Oh good,' says Neil from his room. 'I can faff some more.'

The stage is empty, but the backing tracks are already echoing off the empty seats. It's odd to hear this much of the music being generated without anyone on stage to claim responsibility for it. Dominic has been instructed to run through the whole set once a day, just in case. It is one of the great paranoias of the tour that the computers will crash. If they do, no music
Neil and Chris are met outside by two fans, one of whom cheerfully introduces herself as a satanist.
'She wanted to stand next to Neil,' laughs Chris, triumph antly, as if this absolves him of any responsibility. 'I've always said that rock'n'roll has nothing to do with all this devil stuff, but,' he muses, affecting a spooky voice, 'it makes you wonder, doesn't it?'
Before the rehearsal - first things first - there are some pressing problems. The stage is black but the curtain pinned along its front is brown. Chris is raging. He rails about it in a well-for-goodness-sake-how-could-anyone-possibly-imaginewe'd-put-up-with-that-for-even-half-a-second voice. It is changed.
Neil likewise has found an object for fury, the huge Diners Club sign that hangs from the venue roof. This is less easily solved - they are firmly told that it cannot be removed or covered. Surreptitious secondhand sponsorship like this is a pet hate and they look furious.
As this is going on the musicians wander on to the stage and begin doing their solo sums. Courtney Pine - with a little help from Jay - careers into Luther Vandross's 'So Amazing'. This sort of thing is pretty impressive the first time you see it - all these talented people, just creating . . . how wonderful. But it has been happening at every rehearsal and will continue throughout the whole tour; the pleasure soon wears thin. Sometimes - with Courtney for instance - you feel that he does it just for the pure joy of playing (he plays for much of the rest of the day in his room, without an audience). Sometimes it seems as though they're auditioning.
One of the ironies of touring is that now - the day before their first major concert - the Pet Shop Boys have been so busy travelling on planes and giving press conferences and fighting for their right to take tea and sandwiches in bare knees that they haven't rehearsed for ages. In their case it has been particularly long because of their decision to come to Hong Kong a couple of days before the shows to acclimatize and approach their first major concert without panic. The last run-through was six days ago and this afternoon it shows a little. There are a few sticky patches, a few wrong entries on-stage and a few technical hitches.
Chris is quite clearly In A Mood. It's never difficult to notice this. You can tell when Chris is In A Mood not just because of his determined lack of cheer but because he won't talk and he does everything with an exaggerated nonchalance as if to scream, 'What does it matter anyway?' Today he is partly In A Mood because the computers have been doing odd things, but he is mainly In A Mood because of his clothes.
The Chris Lowe Stage Clothes Saga has been bubbling along for a while now. From Neil's perspective Chris had said some weeks ago that he didn't want many clothes changes and he has only recently had a change of heart. From Chris's perspective he has been deliberately ignored and overlooked.
Later, when I ask them about this, they both play it down (perhaps because it's part of a taped interview for Smash Hits) and explain it away as a misunderstanding. Neil sorted his clothes out one Sunday afternoon after going to Derek Jarman's, tiddly on champagne after a fulsome brunch at Tom Watkins' house. They whizzed through a list of fanciful costume ideas and Neil had said yes to them all because 'it seemed like a jolly good idea at the time'. Chris didn't because everyone had picked up the idea - they thought he'd said this and he insists they just assumed it - that he would just wear the normal Chris Lowe wardrobe. Perhaps Derek Jarman was partly to blame: when he talks about the Pet Shop Boys he will often slip between the terms 'the Pet Shop Boys' and 'Neil' as if they're synonymous and he often talks about the show as if it is a performance whose core is Neil, not the two of them. (Perhaps that's what Chris is really annoyed about.)
Anyway, this afternoon the clothes situation comes to a head. Chris is not happy with the few things he wears. He storms offstage at the end of the rehearsal and silently paces furiously from the dressing-room a few minutes later with Neil and Pete in tow. They are going shopping and - they promise - will arrive at this evening's scheduled radio interview under their own steam. This they do - Chris walking in, considerably more cheerful, with a selection of clothes, including an Issey Miyake suit with which he seems very pleased. Tomorrow afternoon he will wear it at the dress rehearsal and decide he doesn't like it, and it will never appear before an audience, but by then the crisis will have passed.

Neil: Writing a song called 'Let's Make Lots Of Money' was Chris's idea. He takes the blame for that one. That was in about June 1983. We thought it was funny. Once Chris had suggested the title I wrote the words in about fifteen minutes: 'I've got the brains, you've got the looks, let's make lots of money.' It's meant to be a satire; it's meant for everyone to hate it. Here was this nauseating synth duo singing a song called 'Let's Make Lots Of Money'. It's basically an anti-rock group song. It was meant to be rather punk. One of the things we always liked about Bobby O was that we thought he sounded like punk disco and this is like that because it's singing about things you're not supposed to sing about. Saying you're only in it for the money is to destroy the rock credibility, the idea that you're in it for the meaningfulness or for world peace or whatever. It's meant to be a bit of a wind-up, really. The two people in the song are supposed to be absolutely hopeless. I was vaguely thinking of the film Midnight Cowboy where Dustin Hoffman is the guy who wants to go to Florida and John Voigt is the hustler, the brain and the brawns combination. People have often thought it was about me and Chris but I don't think it was really. I don't know if Chris thought that but I just pictured two people. I've never thought of the Pet Shop Boys as me having the brains and Chris having the looks. I don't think it's true.

They are a little late for the radio interview but it doesn't matter because just before they are due on a bigger story breaks. One of the Chinese student leaders, Wir Xaxi, until now feared dead, has surfaced in the West and given an interview and all other programmes are postponed while they broadcast it. It is in a Chinese tongue. Brenda listens intently, sadly, and says he's talking about how the students died 'like cats and dogs'.
In the car park a hysterical fan gives Chris a bobble hat she has made, blue with his name stitched on in red.
'She said, "Will you wear it?"' reports Neil. 'Of course Chris said, "No".'
'She's crying,' says Pete.
Chris elaborates with theatrical cruelty. This is a private routine that Chris specializes in - being horrible about the fans. One suspects it's an embarrassed reaction to how preposterous he finds having fans. Typically once inside the safety of the radio station the hat he has refused to wear goes straight on to his head and remains there for the next hour.
The station is called RTHK, Radio TV Hong Kong: 'like the BBC,' says Brenda. We wait in a reception area that looks and smells like a hospital corridor and discuss what the Liza Minnelli LP might be called. The deadline is fast approaching and they have not yet come up with a good idea. For a while it was to be called In Depth but then they repossessed that as the title of a six-song Pet Shop Boys CD released in Japan to coincide with the tour. Liza has suggested Pink, but they're not keen.
The interviewer introduces herself and asks them what they would like the questions to be about. They shrug.
'How about anything personal?' she inquires.
'I don't have a personal life,' answers Neil firmly.
She reconsiders. 'Hobbies?'
'That's a good one,' says Chris. It's hard to tell whether or not he's serious.
'We could talk about the political situation in Hong Kong, offers Neil. Anyway, he reassures her, 'We'll just rant on once we get started.'
She nods.
'How about phone calls?' he suggests, getting into the swing of things. 'Phone calls are always good. Have some phone calls.'
She looks pleased and relieved, as if this was something she'd wanted but had been too timid to ask about.
In the studio she suggests that they might like to speak some Chinese words to introduce themselves.
'I only know one word,' sniggers Chris, 'and it means two things.'
The word is 'hai' which, depending how you say it, means either 'hello' or something rather rude. As it happens it is included in her suggested sentence 'Ngor day hai Pet Shop Boys': 'Hello, we are the Pet Shop Boys'. They say it.
The interview begins with her playing their new British single 'It's Alright'. As it plays she asks them, off microphone, if they can talk about the song afterwards.
'Yes,' threatens Neil, 'I can talk about it for hours.'
In fact he talks about it a bit. Then she teases Chris on air for eating sandwiches while talking, Neil stands up and shows off his shorts while she describes them, Chris announces that he is wearing a woolly hat and 'looks a bit like Blackadder' (a television reference that understandably foxes her) and they are played a Cantonese version of 'It's A Sin' by someone called Danny Chan: rather thin and cheap but fairly faithful to the original. Neil mentions that a Japanese star recorded it and, to their annoyance, changed the words. Neil was told that the reason for this was that in Japan they don't have the concept of sin. They are asked about how they find Hong Kong (they say they like the people and the mountainous skyline, hate the humidity) and then Chris reminisces about playing drums in his school's Combined Cadet Force.
'I was the person who decided the rhythm but I've got a notoriously bad memory so I'd keep changing it.'
'That must be how you learned to compose?' suggests the interviewer, hoping that she has made a fundamental discovery here. Chris looks taken aback.
'Um, possibly.'
The interview is given an added bizarre edge by the need to translate it for the Chinese audience. After each section of speech - maybe five minutes' worth - the interviewer launches into Chinese and offers a resume of what's been said. Whenever proper nouns and untranslatable English words pop out from her speech Chris giggles.
More questions: they explain how 'Domino Dancing' was inspired by a phrase they used on a holiday in St Lucia when Pete would dance after winning at dominoes (Pete obligingly demonstrates the triumphant steps through the glass next door).
As she plays another record Rob anxiously pokes his head round the studio door. This interview has been set up, and been agreed to, largely because the concerts here are far from sold out. 'You haven't talked about the concerts,' he says to them beseechingly. Maybe this is the sort of thing he is supposed to worry about; they nod and after the next record Neil does a spiel about how wonderful the concerts wil1 be. It's an advert everyone's already bored with and as he talks Chris mimes a yawn.
Chris yawns again when the first caller, Gladys, gets through only to ask why they have chosen Hong Kong to begin their tour. It's a question they have already answered on tonight's show. Chris scowls. The next caller, Dennis, asks what the aim of the concert is. Neil and Chris exchange bemused looks.
'To spread love and peace throughout the world,' says Neil with a straight face.
The interviewer takes over again.
'What do you do?' she asks Chris.
'Very good question,' he answers. 'Dunno really.' A few minutes later he is telling the audience how 'we write songs, just like Rodgers and Hammerstein'.
'What are you doing after the tour?' she asks.
Chris squirms with embarrassment. 'Writing a new LP,' he says. Later he explains how shameful it was to say this: 'writing a new LP' is the pathetic clichéd answer that pop stars always come up with when asked what they're doing next. It's not the sort of thing the Pet Shop Boys should say. Even though, of course - and this was the tricky problem that Chris couldn't find a way round - in this case it's the truth. After the tour they are writing a new LP .
To finish, Neil makes a long, passionate speech about the fabulousness of being here.
'And you, Chris?' the interviewer asks.
He grunts nonchalantly. 'I'd like to say exactly the same.'
Now and again during the interview people have come in and, while records are playing, argued with the interviewer. It seems an inter-radio row is going on between this and another station in the same organization over the Pet Shop Boys. They are now led to another studio, to another DJ, this one older and English. He chats enthusiastically about jazz performers whom we have never heard of and asks the same questions, more or less, polite but fairly uninterested.
It is only later that we note that there were no questions asked about the political situation. Back in Britain we had imagined it would be all anyone here ever talked about - it was all over the British newspapers - and pop stars always get asked questions on thorny issues of the day. Maybe they thought these things were the last things to discuss with a pop group, though I suspect it's simpler than that. People who live here can talk about the situation here any time. The Pet Shop Boys may be more interested in talking about the situation here than about themselves, but Hong Kong is more interested in talking about the Pet Shop Boys.
Back at the hotel Neil has decided he is ill. He has been muttering all day that he thought last night's Italian meal was dodgy and now he has made his mind up. It is, he officially declares, a drama. 'I'm ill,' he sighs, heading for bed. 'I can spend all tomorrow saying we'll cancel the concert.'

Thursday, 29 June

'London OK, first Birmingham very poor, Glasgow slow, Japan something like 80, 50, 60, 80, 30.'
Ivan rattles through the latest ticket sales. Neil and Chris aren't too happy - they have accepted advice on where they should play and are worried that some concerts simply won't be sold out. Ivan explains that one reason is that in Britain credit card bookings have fallen way below expectation. Ironically they take some pleasure in this statistic, for it has long been a reluctantly accepted law about the Pet Shop Boys that a large part of their audience are yupp es. Perhaps, this new evidence suggests, this isn't so. There is another plus point. 'You get more money on non-credit card bookings,' Ivan explains to them. They look pleased. Then Chris looks worried.
'I hope it's not all screaming girls.'
Tonight's show isn't sold out. All ticket sales and nightclub attendances have been way down since the Chinese student massacre and between 50 and 70 per cent capacity seems likely. They are cheered a little by the story - happily bandied around though nobody even seems quite clear where it's come from or just how true it is - that American teenage starlet Tiffany recently visited and only managed 15 per cent.

Neil is still feeling ill. 'Maybe it's nerves,' he considers, though he stubbornly adds, 'I don't feel remotely nervous.' He phones me and asks me to his room to discuss the format and content of this book. Nothing is decided. After a while we are inter
rupted by Ivan. He has a problem. Derek Jarman's films, to be back-projected during six of the songs, had to be sent to the Hong Kong censor for clearance and approval. The censor has requested two changes.
The first is simple. During 'Nothing Has Been Proved', a song about the Profumo affair, written for Dusty Springfield to sing as the theme song of the film Scandal, images from the time are superimposed with words and phrases like 'LONDON SWINGS'. At one point it says 'FUCK'. Neil and Chris didn't like this in the first place and had already asked for the film to be re-edited - at a cost of Ł4,000 to themselves - to exclude the word. Somehow it is still in. Ivan is to instruct Steve, the projectionist, to black out the word on every one of the three hundred frames on which it appears.
The second objection is more problematic. The 'It's A Sin' film builds into a crescendo of images perceived as sinful. 'Lust' is depicted by two handsome boys. At first they run oil over their chests, then one kisses the other on the temple, then they kiss mouth to mouth, deeply. All the kissing - say the censors- must go.
Neil's immediate reaction is simply to show it anyway and to face the consequences. 'If they impose a big fine or cancel tomorrow night, if it causes a big rumpus, it'll probably be good for the tour . . .'

'Well,' says Chris in his I-told-you-it'd-be-a-disaster voice as we pull up outside the deserted venue, 'as usual hundreds of fans screaming outside.'
'They don't have screaming fans in Hong Kong,' insists Neil authoritatively. 'Someone told me . . .'
'There's two,' points out Ivan, clearly feeling that there is a morale problem he must overcome. Characteristically Chris is having none of it.
'They're probably looking for the bus station,' he says.
Inside we meet Mark Farrow, the designer responsible for all the Pet Shop Boys artwork. He has just flown in from Britain via Delhi. He brings with him a copy of the NME in which Malcolm McLaren, reviewing the singles, is fairly nice about 'It's Alright'. Neil and Chris are somewhat bemused, for the previous week on Radio One's Singled Out review programme he had been horrible about it: indeed it is this, one suspects, rather than any more deep-rooted objection to him that is the inspiration for the 'Malcolm McLaren is a prat' script.
Mark also tells us that the Sunrise party Chris had b,een to on Saturday night was on the front page of the Sun on Monday. Last autumn the tabloid press had whipped up a moral panic about Acid House parties, but throughout this year raves have been growing in number and size without the newspapers knowing it - the furore about the party Chris was at will, it turns out, mark the beginning of a second wave that will continue throughout the year, with the police blocking roads, closing service stations, disconnecting phone information lines and successfully imprisoning organizers. But all that is months away, and here in Hong Kong, so far away, it seems unbelievable that it was even in the papers. For the moment the Sun has merely recorded their insincere outrage. They say the landowner was told the venue was being used to film a video and report that there is to be a Home Office inquiry.
After a dress rehearsal, they have a censorship rehearsal. Despite Neil's earlier bravado Ivan has persuaded them that it's not worth deliberately spiting the censors. Steve, the projectionist, simply covers the projector's light beam with his hands during the offending sequences so that the screen behind the stage goes dark. At the end of the film, where the two men simply enjoy a friendly embrace, he lets the film run as normal.
'Hugging's all right, is it?' Chris asks Ivan.
'I'm going to say at the end,' announces Neil a touch regally, 'that it's been censored. I think it's quite exciting. Don't you think I should?'
'Neil,' reprimands Chris. 'It was my idea.'

Do either of you think of one of you as the boss?
Neil: Well, obviously I operate as the boss because I'm the bossy person. But I'm not the boss, because Chris operates in a very different way from that.
Chris: I've never liked the idea of bosses. You can't divide up operations like that. Neil is naturally very good at 'being the boss'. But nothing's as simple as that; that's why I think it's wrong when you have a job and there's a boss. I've basically got a kind of communist attitude towards things where everyone's just as important even if it's the person who makes a cup of tea . . . I've always felt like that.
You encourage people to think that Neil is the boss in business matters, don't you? If someone comes to you you deflect them . . .
Chris: Well, there's no point in asking me because Neil will have a different opinion . . . (He pauses, realizing this doesn't quite make sense.) It's got to be run past two people.
Neil: Also Chris doesn't like saying things to people. If we're making a record - and this has been true from day one - Chris wil1 say about someone, 'I don't think they should be playing that' and I say, 'Say something' and he'll start sulking. So I have to say, 'What do you think about that bass-line?' to the producer and then I'll say, 'And what do you think, Chris?' . . .
Chris (nodding): . . . and then I'll say it.
Neil: I'm Chris's representative on earth half the time.
Chris, do you recognize this scenario?
Chris: Yes. It's true.
Neil: Like, for this tour in a meeting Patrick, the lighting designer, was going on about this model (a small, threedimensional model, hopelessly conventional and inappropriate, of how the lights for the show might be) . . .
Chris: . . . and I'm furious . . .
Neil: . . . and I can see, as I interpret Chris to the world, that Chris is in a bad mood about this but he's not going to say anything so we're going to waste the entire meeting. So I have to say, 'Chris, what do you think?' And, by the way, he was totally right about it.
Chris: You see, Neil is very good at saying something diplomatically. If I was to stand up in that meeting I would absolutely destroy Patrick. That's why I sit there, because I know I can't say it in a mce way.
Neil: Yes, you'd say something personally insulting.
What would you have done if Neil hadn't been there?
Chris: I probably wouldn't have done anything.
Neil: Actually you're quite good when I'm not there.
Chris: Actually I would have gone up to Derek Jarman afterwards.
Neil: Chris has stronger opinions about things like that. I'm sometimes a bit of an 'anything for a quiet life' merchant, whereas Chris tends to have an opinion which doesn't involve the personality concerned, therefore he has an uncluttered opinion about it.
Do you mind it, Chris, when all the official communication is directed to Neil?
Chris: I don't like it. Sometimes it's fair, but if there's a bias with a team of people we're working with . . . I get a bit ratty when we shoot a video and I'm not in it at all. That can annoy me because it's unfair. (Pauses.) I don't like talking about it.
Neil (to Chris): But the imbalance is there for the things we're talking about because you very rarely communicate your ideas directly to people. You communicate them through me, therefore sometimes they assume you don't have ideas. Also you have, in my opinion, an inferiority complex anyway.
Chris: Yeah, probably.
Neil: I actually think you have a giant inferiority complex, that you fundamentally think inside you that you're not very important. Therefore you get paranoid and think, 'No one thinks I'm important'. In fact people do, but one of the good things about this tour is that they can see what Chris does. Often, because Chris operates so that he doesn't say things to people, they assume that he's not interested, that he doesn't play a major role. And then, of course (turning to Chris), when they do ask, you say the biggest put-downs about yourself. (Chris laughs in recognition of the truth in this.) It's you that originally compared yourself to Andrew Ridgeley.
Yes. It's like during the radio interview where, when they asked what you did, you said, 'Very good question . . . dunno really'.
Neil: Of course that is also a sense of humour, but to most people listening, especially once it is translated, that sense of humour won't come across.
Chris: Well, who in their right minds is going to say that and mean it?
Do you think you do have an inferiority complex?
Chris: I probably have. It's very difficult to judge yourself. Actually I'm a great kind of niggling little-hater-from-behindthe-scenes person.
Of yourself?
Chris: No. Of figures of authority. I've always been like that, from a very low-profile position, rather than someone who says, 'I don't like that.' 'Lack of confidence' might be better than 'inferiority complex'. I've not got much confidence.

Back-stage Courtney Pine wanders the corridor, practicing, blowing shrill phrases from his saxophone.
'What time do they let the little people in?' he asks.
The doors open at 7pm. Lawrence and I hurry round to the front entrance, to talk to the crowds of excited fans and to photograph their anticipation before they stream into the hall. We locate what we think is the main entrance but we are obviously wrong because there is no one there. We walk round the building. We return. We meet no one. Our first guess was right: this is the main entrance but no one is there. Confused, we ask the security guard. No, he explains, people won't come for a while. This is how pop audiences behave in Hong Kong. If the ticket says 8 o'clock then they're jolly well not going to turn up at 7 and twiddle their thumbs for an hour, getting over-excited. Just as in Britain one might turn up to the theatre or the cinema just a few minutes early, so will they here.
The security guard's confidence is justified. By quarter to eight there is a steady trickle of locals, walking into the auditorium to be met by wafts of classical music being piped through the PA (Schonberg's Transfigured Night). In other places, later on the tour, this music will seem an effective antidote to the traditional chomp-a-cheeseburger-and-shlurp-acoke expectant rock'n'roll bonhomie; here, in a well-lit, clean hall, half-filled with a polite Hong Kong audience, it only heightens the feeling that we all might be waiting for a serious academic lecture, not the first night of the Pet Shop Boys tour.
Behind the blackout curtains friendly chaos rules. The dancers practice their moves- '1-2-3 - 1-2-3 - ' - the singers shout 'scrumpity scrumpity scrump' (the significance of which is lost on me), wardrobe tetchily chide people who are using 'It's A Sin' costumes as seats and everyone waits. Neil and Chris are in their dressing-room. To get themselves into the mood they listen to 'In Private', an ecstatic, Motown-style song that they recently wrote for and recorded with Dusty Springfield.
By the side of the stage Steve, the projectionist, mutters about the film for 'Nothing Has Been Proved'. As instructed he has scribbled over the word 'FUCK' 300 times but he is well aware it's a poor disguise.
'You can still see it.'
He is pleased.
'It's a compromise for Derek really. I'll take the blame.'
The whole 'It's A Sin' censorship fiasco has deeply affronted him.
'Friends of you know,' he says angrily. 'It's still banned here.'
The Pet Shop Boys actually go on-stage at 8.25, twenty-five minutes late, a fact that is blackly noted in the local press. The message is clear. The way things are done here is: people turn up on time - not early, not late - and they expect those they come to see to do exactly the same. Neil awaits his entrance standing in his shiny silver overcoat holding a cup of white wine. (There was to have been a strict no-alcohol-before-the-performance rule but at the very first hurdle it has been deemed unrealistic and has been abandoned.) The house lights go down and he grins. 'We haven't decided who to blame yet,' he says, walking stagewards.

Afterwards, they are happy to blame no one but themselves. The performance is quite clearly a triumph. It's plain on Neil's face how delighted he is to be in front of an audience and everyone who has watched him in rehearsal is shocked by how animated he has suddenly become. Chris stands stock stil1 for most of the show but bounds around delightedly during 'Paninaro'. All his targets - the Cure, U2, the redeemed Malcolm McLaren and the assistant manager of the Mandarin Hotel -escape their planned public vilification: instead he says, 'I don't like rock'n'roll . . . I don't like country .. . I love disco music .. . I love having a good time ... I like it here' for which he receives a decent cheer.
During 'It's A Sin' the covering-up of the kisses is sloppily done and each time darkness comes a little too late. The censors - who have actually fumed up to check that their directions have been followed - smile benignly as if to say, 'Fair enough, you've made an effort, we can live with that.' Neil says nothing to the audience about the censorship - in fact he says nothing much to the crowd apart from several 'thank yous' until the band introductions before the encores when he, with transparent sincerity, says he'd 'like to thank you for being such a great audience'.
There is one disaster. Before 'Domino Dancing' Neil must change very quickly from the striped City shirt he sports for 'Shopping' into an embroidered Latinesque one. He fails and misses his entrance. Then he begins singing the chorus at the wrong place. The rest is chaos. Eventually he sits down at one side of the stage and lets Courtney Pine fill in what has now become a peculiar semi-instrumental. Afterwards this is not seen as tragic, just hilarious. 'I'm rather proud of the disaster,' Neil says. Nevertheless in future it is decided that Danny Cummings will play a percussion solo between the songs. This, of course, they realize with delight, is thrillingly tin-Pet Shop Boys. A percussion solo is nothing but a fancy name for a drum solo and the drum solo is the epitome of rock'n'roll naffness. Neil and Chris try to turn this about-sum into a virtue: when you make a stand out of standing against tradition then you can always justify reverting to tradition as a stand against your own new tradition. They say that they 'love the fact that we've got a drum solo'. Likewise they rave about the intermission.
'After all we've said,' laughs Chris, 'we've got one of the best rock'n'roll light shows ever.'
These same conflicting impulses drive their reaction towards performing for an audience. The standard rock'n'roll pose is to encourage the audience to celebrate your wonderfulness and conspicuously to bask and indulge in their approval: you, the star, and they, the followers, tacitly agree to join together in praising you. Rather problematically - as far as the Pet Shop Boys are concerned -audiences seem rather to like this, perhaps because when a performer responds, when the performer looks as though they're enjoying the acclaim, well, then, the audience is having an effect; they are part of the performance, not just spectators.
The Pet Shop Boys' instincts run against that. Their demeanour in performance was established in their second Top of the Pops appearance when 'West End Girls' had just reached number one. As they were introduced Chris, a little concerned, leant over to Neil and hissed, 'Don't look triumphant.' Likewise on-stage in Hong Kong the Pet Shop Boys again do their best not to look triumphant. It's obvious in Chris's nonchalant wave as he leaves the stage after 'Paninaro'; it's obvious in Neil's embarrassed half-waves and quiet 'thank you '; it's most obvious of all in Chris's habit of standing still during the songs and then, when the lights go down between each, when no one can see him, having a dance in the dark 'because it's so exciting'.

Neil: Whenever we were going to do Top of the Pops there were always crisis meetings beforehand between EMI and our management. They always felt we should do something on Top of the Pops. To be quite honest this still happens now. They want us to have an angle.
Chris: Once Tom drew us a diagram of the idea of the layout he thought we should have. The funny thing was, it was the traditional layout, the one that every group has on Top of the Pops.
Your performance of 'West End Girls' where you - Neil - stood there in a long coat and you - Chris - had a cap over your eyes and played the keyboard with one finger, neither of you moving . . .
Chris: It was a landmark. It had never happened before.
Had you thought out beforehand that doing what you did was probably the most striking thing you could have done?
Chris: We did it because that's what we did in Belgium, when the first version of 'West End Girls' was a hit there. That was an accident, the one in Belgium, because we thought we were just doing a radio interview and we had to do a performance. There was one keyboard there and I had a BOY hat so I said, 'I'll play the bass-line' and so, mainly because of that, that's what I got stuck with. It was an accident originally, then decided to carry it on. I thought it fitted the mood of the song.
It did more than fit the mood of the song in retrospect, didn't it? It established in the public imagination a certain attitude.
Chris: Yeah, it did. But I also wouldn't have felt natural doing anything else. My unreasonable logic (laughs) is that I decide which part I'll mime to, and for that the bass-line is the most obvious part of the arrangement so I just used one finger.
And deliberately put the other hand in your pocket;
Chris (indignantly): I don't have my hand in my pocket! I'd never have one hand in my pocket. I've always thought that if you're going to put your hand in your pocket you've got to put both your hands in both your pockets. To put your hand in one pocket looks 'maybe'. (I look dubious.) It's true! People who walk down the street with one hand in their pocket ... it's nerdish. You've got to have both.
That's a remarkable thing even to hold an opinion about.
Chris: But it's true! Doesn't everyone think that?
l don't think so. Myself, I've never thought about it.
Chris (surprised): Haven't you? Oh, I do.
And not just recently, since becoming a pop star?
Chris: No, I've always been conscious of that. (He suddenly switches, without warning, back to the previous topic of conversation.) Actually, another thing about Top of the Pops, you notice that if you don't move very much you get closer shots on you. A TV presenter told us this. If you're very static the camera will come in very close on you. We didn't know this at the time but one of the things about being static during 'West End Girls' was that you got these close-up shots. I always think that looks good for pop television.
So that the audiencefeel like they're communicating with your inner soul or something?
Chris: Yeah.

'I'd prefer it to have been a one-off,' Chris announces backstage, forever determined not to appear triumphant. 'Now,' he complains, 'we have to do it again.' It's a theme he wil1 return to several times in the early stages of the tour - that the repetition of something like this is fundamentally pointless, that one should do something once and then move on- though in a few weeks he will grudgingly admit that he's changed his mind. Tonight he doesn't keep it up for long. Soon he has forgotten that he is trying to be very cool about all this.
'I'm just a tragic rock'n'roller!' he hoots, champagne in hand. This, Neil suggests, is the beginning of the end, that they're on the slope towards self-parody and pantomime. 'By the end of the tour in "Domino Dancing" we'll have split the audience up,' he laughs, 'and we'll have one side of the house going, "All day all day . . ."'
Perhaps.
Rob arrives breathlessly in the dressing-room, full of congratulations. 'There was so much of it,' he raves.
'Wrong thing to say,' teases Chris. ' Very tactful. So it was too long?'
'The manager says: every song dragged on,' adds Neil.
Rob, who was genuinely thrilled by the concert, is embarrassed into silence.
Patrick, the lighting designer, pops his head round the door. "'Paninaro" was good, Chris,' he says.
Chris flashes him an I'll-try-to-look-bashful-but-what-thehell!-I'm-marvellous-aren't-I? shrug. 'I've worked hard on it,' he says, though he can't resist adding, 'It's the best show we'll ever do - it's all downhill from here.'
Chris is actually obviously a little surprised at how Chris Lowe- the man who has said time and time again 'I don't enjoy performing at all' - felt out on-stage. As we join the band and crew for more champagne he admits to a very strange, unexpected feeling during 'Paninaro' at the back of his eyes. He never mentions it again, ever. People flood round, congratulating him. He laughs. 'Don't you just love adulation?'
Meanwhile Neil is having a minor crisis. His right eye has swollen up; some make-up under a contact lens, he later decides. He asks if the venue people have some eye ointment. The remedy round these parts, they tell him, is black beans. He politely refuses.

Outside the stage door are perhaps fifty fans. Neil and Chris leave the party to sign autographs for them. As soon as they appear the fans go hysterical. (Whoever told Neil that this sort of thing doesn't happen in Hong Kong was clearly mistaken.)
'Chris! You're a cool man!'
'Give us a kiss!'
'On the lips!'
'Give me some smile, man!'
'Hit the smiling face!'
They sign posters, programmes, records, t-shirts, handbags, anything. Whenever they kiss someone the nearby fans whoop in shared delight. Once they have completed a round they get into a car, the metal barriers are pulled back and they drive off.
The fans loiter a while longer, thrilled by what has happened.
'Chris is a cool man,' says one, 'and he kissed me.'
'Neil is very smart,' offers another, 'and the voice is very good.'
'Tonight I do not wash the face,' says a third. 'Neil kissed me. I dream I get married with him.'
I ask them which other pop stars they like.
'Depeche Mode.'
'OMD.'
'New Kids On The Block.
'Erasure.'
'Depeche Mode.'
'Martin Gore! Chris is like Martin Gore!'
This assertion is greeted by many agreeing nods.
'They are similar. Chris is stylish, They are both lovely. No sexy 'I think Neil is sexier than Chris.'
This causes heated debate.
'Neil has too much hair on the legs,' says one disapprovingly.
'You can see it.'

Neil: It only occurred to Chris and me months after we were successful that one reason people liked us was because they liked the way we looked. It took us ages and ages and ages to realize that and we were quite startled by that fact, because it had never occurred to ourselves to look in terms of people fancying us. We never thought we were good-looking like that and we'd never thought of presenting ourselves in a cute way and then we suddenly realized that it was quite a big part of our audience.
Were you pleased?
Neil: Yes. As it happens I like the scream pop element.
Because you like it simplyfor itself or because you like the idea of it because you have an obsession with teenage hysteria?
Neil: Because I have an obsession with teenage hysteria, and just to find m~ self at the centre of any of it I just find quite thrilling. So the other must be partly true as well.

Ivan has firmly laid down the law: tonight there shall be no group celebration because if we celebrate tonight then tomorrow's show will suffer. Nevertheless by common instinct everyone gathers in the hotel foyer and by the time we reach a Japanese restaurant there are at least thirty of us all sat crosslegged round a low table in our socks. Drink flows.
'Speech!' shouts someone to Neil.
'Unaccustomed as I am . . . I'd just like to speak for an hour or so on the situation in South-East Asia,' he mugs, but already everyone's attention has wandered.
Chris - at the other end of the long, thin table - points in disgust at some raw fish in front of him and complains loudly to Neil.
'It's so fishy!' he shouts indignantly.
'Of course it's fishy,' snaps Neil back. 'It's fish.'
'I want meat,' says Chris and stands up. 'I want more food.'
All along the table members of the touring party are getting to know each other. Pinkie talks to percussionist Danny Cum mings.
'How did you get your job?' she asks.
'I'm very very famous,' says Danny straight-faced.
'Well,' she says, and considers this assertion, 'I've never heard of you.'
A lobster arrives. It is moving. It is alive. Chris looks horrified - raw fish is bad enough, but this. It is sent back and returns a few minutes later, dead and tidily unpacked, lying desiccated within its shell.

Friday, 30June

At the afternoon soundcheck everyone japes around. Spirits are high.
'It's madness, isn't it?' says Pete with concern. 'They're too cocky. After one show they think they've toured.' Already, he says, after one night Neil is talking about taking the tour to America.
In the canteen I sit next to Courtney. More than anyone else he seems a little alarmed by this person strolling round taking notes in a big blue book. 'I'm going to burn your book,' he laughs. 'I'll get it banned. I've got cousins in the BBC.'
He plays me some music on his new portable DAT machine. It is him playing a saxophone synthesizer and it is very beautiful. 'My next LP,' he says, and I tell him it sounds good. He looks at me - incredulous - as if to say 'you know nothing' and says that it is rubbish and he just recorded it this afternoon, making it up as he went along.
We are interrupted by the promoter's partner, Steve Beaver. He has something on his mind. He marches up to Courtney as if they have been friends for many, many years and starts telling him about some old harmonica-based instrumental of which he is recording a new House music version.
'I've been thinking,' he says, feigning nonchalance, 'that maybe you could play saxophone on it and we could make you the featured person on the record.'
He promises to send Courtney a tape- making it sound as if Courtney has twisted his arm into him doing Courtney this one very special fa our. Courtney mumbles a few polite 'maybes' and 'we'll sees' then leaves.
A minute or so later Andrew Bull walks in.
'Great news,' announces Steve. 'Me and Courtney are going to be doing some work together.'

Before tonight's concert Neil and Chris give an interview for the London magazine Time Out, to be published just before the London dates. As a rule the Pet Shop Boys don't do many interviews for British publications, but they have done an unprecedented number for this tour: Smash Hits (twice, including my on-tour piece), No. 1, Just 17, the Daily Mirror and this. Murray, their press officer, has also arranged, with their blessing, a series of interviews to be done by Derek Jarman. In retrospect they explain this activity as them wanting people to know about the tour simply because they are proud of it but, although there's a degree of that, right now one also feels that, faced with a new and unpredictable situation, they are determined to do everything they can to make it go right. Besides, they have had endless arguments to get their current British single 'It's Alright' released and several people have told them it won't do well. They are determined to prove those people wrong.
The interviewer, an ex-Time Out staff member called Jon Wall, now living and working in Hong Kong, is friendly and genuinely interested and afterwards they pronounce him perfectly nice, although the interview was a little dull. 'It was one of those "don't mention their sex lives" interviews,' smiles Neil.
Jon Wall had seen the show the previous night and liked it enough to come again tonight, and he told them that the locals he has talked to were particularly impressed at the way the Pet Shop Boys have - they assumed - adapted their performance to thc Chinese theatrical style of presentation. Here, in Hong Kong, the habit of Western performers of expecting people to be entertained just by their music and maybe the odd piece of jigging about, with at best one or two costume changes, is considered a little disappointing.
A couple of weeks later when the article appears everyone involved is pleasantly surprised. It isn't dull and in fact is the most lucid account of the tour that will be published anywhere (like most pop stars they are pleased as punch when anyone takes the trouble and bother to find out exactly what they have done). It also has, as is now traditional in almost all pieces about the Pet Shop Boys, a stab at The Point Of The Pet Shop Boys:
'The Pet Shop Boys' ethic, their certain aloof trademark that permeates video, Iyric, photoshoot and interview, is an unflappable sense of cool. Coolness is their purpose. Consider their history: they met not at a club but at a music shop; Tennant's vocals are not sung or torched but chatted; Iyrics, never strident political tub-thumps, are more often sly, wry personal devices or obtuse anti-Thatcher-brutalism social observations; the duo's buzz marketing word has always been "undersell", Tennant wary of the instant pop bleed he witnessed as a writer on Smash Hits.'
The piece finishes like this:
'"Sometimes," says Tennant, "we've been puzzled as to what the entire point of playing live is, anyway."
'"I'm still puzzled, really," says Lowe.'

Shortly before going on-stage Chris has a strop. Their reception in Hong Kong has not been good enough. Tonight's show is still not quite sold out and Chris is furious that they have bothered to tour here - proclaimed as 'second only to Madonna' - and, student massacre or no student massacre, there are empty seats. 'They always complain that big groups don't come,' he says, 'and then when they do, they don't come.' He announces, categorically, dramatically, that they will never return.
Tonight's concert is like last night's without the mistakes. Chris's speech has shrunk further, just two words: 'Hello everyone.' Huge cheer. During 'It's A Sin' one of the costumes, the one worn by Hugo, a bloated, pink, polystyrene body in bra and panties, is fully exhibited for the first time. It has a penis, last night tucked away out of sight. This evening it is showing in its lengthy semi-erect glory. From now on interested parties will inquire before each show whether it is to be a 'penis in' or a 'penis out' occasion.
At the end of 'Always On My Mind' Neil begins to stride off-stage, then breaks halfway, turns back to the audience and holds out his hands, palms upwards, as if to say 'Well? Weren't we fabulous?'

'You can hear the "hello London's" coming on every night,' says Murray, both impressed and a little flabbergasted by this blossoming showmanship.

. .

Andrew Bull is in a fizz. Tonight, when the 'It's A Sin' film was shown, no one bothered to cover it up. This wasn't by express design as far as the Pet Shop Boys were concerned, but they're happy enough.
'I'm so disappointed,' fumes Mr Bull. 'You never even tried to cover it up.' One can't help getting the impression that in this matter he is not bowing down to officialdom but expressing his own prejudices, his own disgust.
The Pet Shop Boys take little notice. In fact they are privately rather amused by the excuse given by projectionist Steve - that he couldn't tell when the kissing scenes were until they'd been projected.
'It's getting boring, playing live,' pipes Chris, cheerfully.
Pete, who was taking photos from in front of the stage, disputes that this is Chris's true opinion. He tells Chris he thought that at one stage Chris had been crying with emotion.
'Chris? Crying?' scoffs Neil incredulously. 'You must be joking.'
'I'm sorry,' says Chris, 'but I'm a bit bored. I keep thinking, "just five more songs". The edge has gone.'
Neil nods. He confesses that during one of the songs he was far too busy wondering what they might have for dinner later.
Pete shows Neil a Polaroid of his red cape spin during 'It's A Sin'.
'That's quite interesting,' he coos. '"Me In A Twirl". It sounds like a Smiths song.'
Chris stands admiringly, just looking at his rack of stage clothes. 'It's more than fashion,' he sighs melodramatically. 'These are museum pieces. My Issey Miyake clothes are more than just clothing, they're sculpture.'
Dainton tells them that there are 150 fans outside tonight, waiting.
'We can't sign 150,' says Chris.
'If we wait,' counsels Neil, 'some of those will get bored and go away.'

The fans are mostly girls, old teenagers, with a smattering of serious, fashionably dressed boys and a loud posse of British army girls stationed in Hong Kong. I go out to have a look.
'If I give you 100 dollars will you smuggle me into their boot? Where are they staying? Can I stay in their room?'
'I love Neil Tennant. He is Mr Cool. He is Mr Right.'
'He's cute.'
'He's kind.'
'He's very clean.'
'They're a very clean group.
'The songs are really deep.'
'They're handsome.'
No satanic.'
'Can you say "hi" to Craig Logan?'
'They're British. You can dance to their music. I hate American music. BonJovi.' (Makes an i'm-going-to-vomit expression.) 'Pet Shops Boys is easy to listen to, a little bit sad.'
'Neil is cool. For fun I'd love go kiss he.'
'The show was brilliant. There was always something going on.'
'I saw Duran Duran and Stevie Wonder and this is the best.'
'I like Chris best. I like his hat. He just stands there and is moody-looking. He seems the strong, silent type.'
This comment prompts debate.
'And they're always the worst.'
Giggles.
'It appeals to a woman.'
'Men who say what they're going to do, don't do it.'
When Neil and Chris come out there is mayhem. The army girls burst into a raucous version of the Righteous Brothers' 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' in imitation of a scene in the film Top Gun where Tom Cruise serenades Kelly McGillis in a bar. Chris raises an embarrassed eyebrow in their direction as if to say, 'Who let them in?'

The answer to Neil's on-stage contemplation is that we are to eat at the Bostonian, a restaurant in our hotel where the menu is of American food, droll broken-English witticisms and astronomic prices. There they dredge through the 'It's Alright' row. They have just had some good news. The British charts are announced on a Sunday, based purely on sales from Monday to Saturday of that week. Gallup, the company that compiles the chart, gives subscribing record companies provisional midweek charts, based on the sales so far, on Thursday and again on Friday. We have just heard that the Thursday midweek for 'It's Alright' is that it will enter the charts at number two. They are delighted. EMI, it turns out, had mixed feelings about releasing the record at all. Though the people who work closest with the Pet Shop Boys in the company's Parlophone subsidiary were keen, the wider (and, the implication was, wiser) feeling was that it was a bad idea. Tom and Rob, their management, sided with the latter view. Neil and Chris weren't simply insulted that people didn't like their new record- they also got a distinct impression that people feared their career was slipping. 'There was definitely an "EMI-have-got-thejitters-about-the-PetShop-Boys feeling,"' says Neil. 'It was "They've been popular for too long. How long's it going to last?"' Much of the record business, perpetually bemused by public taste, is as confused by success as by failure. One marketing executive at EMI has, it is whispered, regally pronounced that he could 'market this record into the Top 20 but not into the Top 10'.
It was Chris who held firm, simply because he was thrilled by the record they had made. He couldn't stop playing it, he had played it to his family and they'd loved it and he wanted it released. He said he didn't care whether it even got in the Top 50: it should come out. Neil is usually the face of the Pet Shop Boys that the record company see, but this time Chris phoned up everyone involved to insist it be released.
Nevertheless now it is EMI who are making the bullish statements - that the record might go straight into the charts at number one - and it is the Pet Shop Boys who are sensibly tempering the excitement. They know that any group like them who have lots of keen fans, who will buy the record early in its first week of release, will find their chart position falling back by Sunday. In fact it's a syndrome - 'the Paul Weller syndrome' as they tartly refer to it - that they are worried about. The problem is this: you can enter the charts so high, thanks to your keen fans, that there simply isn't time for more fairweather fans to get to like the record before it is going down the charts, its life over. Now we must wait and see.
After dinner we go clubbing. We try a disco called 1997 but they tell us there is no room so we walk down the narrow streets, a large posse flanking the swanky car holding Neil and Chris, to a disco called California. Once they realize they have famous guests they clear some table space. Champagne appears. Neil chats for a couple of hours, then leaves. Chris dances, at first shyly, off the dance-floor by the toilets, then on the dancefloor. At 3.00am- we return to 1997 and it's 5.20 when we eventually take a taxi back to the Ramada Renaissance. It's already light and we all have that tired but ecstatic feeling you get when you've stayed up all night having fun.
'This is my favourite part of the day,' sighs Chris. 'Morning has broken.' He sniggers. 'That's a good line. I must tell Neil. No one's used it, have they?'
He roars with laughter.

'Morning Has Broken' was a Top 10 hit for Cat Stevens in 1972. One of his other famous songs was 'Wild World'. When the Pet Shop Boys single 'It's A Sin' went to number one Jonathan King wrote about it in his column in the Sun, suggesting that they had committed an act of theft from Cat Stevens and that they should be punished for it. (Cat Stevens, who is now a Muslim called Yusef Islam and who was soon to become embroiled in the Salman Rushdie affair, was contacted by another newspaper but said he wasn't bothered.) After Jonathan King repeated the accusation the Pet Shop Boys instigated defamation proceedings.
As the case neared court, Jonathan King even made a record in support of himself, a version of 'Wild World' using the arrangement , If 'It's A Sin', so that it went 'It's a/it's a/oh baby baby it's a wild world' (Chris bought a copy because he liked it). If anything it weakened his case, but sneakily the Beside was made up of a medley of the Chiffons' 'He's So Fine' and the song that was adjudged to have been cribbed from it by George Harrison, 'My Sweet Lord'. Eventually Jonathan King settled out of court, made a donation to the Jefferriss Research Foundation (a charity specified by the Pet Shop Boys) and apologized.
This wasn't the first time, oddly, that Neil had crossed Jonathan King's trail. In the early seventies when Neil was at college in London, he answered an advert that Jonathan King had placed, searching for talent for his record company. Neil dressed up in his best trousers - baggy, Navy-surplus trousers -and went down to a rehearsal studio.
'I played him two songs,' Neil remembers, 'and he said they were too introspective. And of course he was absolutely right. But he said he liked my trousers.'

Saturday, lJuly

Before dinner, I meet Neil and Chris in Neil's room to interview them formally for the Smash Hits piece I am writing. It's hard, having spent the last few days with them talking about anything and everything, to get them to discuss my questions. Again and again the conversation drifts off. Indeed, as I switch the taperecorder on, Neil carries on talking about the situation here in Hong Kong. The papers are full of a report by a parliamentary committee set up by the British government which has ruled out offering residency to Hong Kong Chinese after 1997.
'They're being slippery,' he concludes. 'They should be taking it up with the Chinese. I think we're crazy to trust the Chinese one single inch. The Chinese will do what they want.'
'And after all the good work that Wham! had done,' sighs Chris.
I make the mistake of asking them how they'd felt before they went on-stage for the first concert. If there's any kind of question that Chris hates it's 'How does it feel?' questions, questions that dig for big, deep reasons for things. He likes to give the impression that in his world there are no big reasons. 'What did I say these questions would be like?' he asks Neil, laughing contemptuously.
'I know,' says Neil, tufting. Nevertheless Neil answers the question at some length - 'not very scared' is the gist of the answer. His speech wanders on and on until he starts pontificating at some length about the on-stage monitoring. It is hardly going to make it to my article. I say to Neil that I'll be fastforwarding through this bit when I transcribe the tape. He tells me that American journalists are forever noting the number on the tape counter next to the corresponding topic 'with a bit where they talk about their sex lives underlined', he laughs. Then he continues his original train of thought. On-stage, he says, he's always scared that he'll forget the words of 'Nothing Has Been Proved'.
'I always think what's the line after "in the house a resignation . . ."
The correct line is 'in the house a resignation/guilty faces every one'
'In the house a resignation/guilty feet ain't got no rhythm, suggests Chris merrily.
Tea and coffee arrive, provoking a small disagreement. Neil has separately asked both Chris and me whether we would like some tea - no choice - and then, rather bizarrely, ordered himself coffee. Chris feigns outrage.
'But no one drinks coffee at this time,' Neil defends, illogically. 'I thought it was a tea-drinking time.'
'We weren't given the choice,' mutters Chris.
We talk about the costumes and Neil says, 'The whole show is held together by velcro.' It is this quote that will appear a few weeks later in the NME in their Big Mouth Strikes Again quotes of the week section.
I ask them about a plan they had told me weeks before the tour: that all the dancers would have to appear naked at one stage. Apparently it was put in the contracts but they had forgotten about it. They tell me that Danny Cummings was ordered to lose two stone (and more or less has). Neil says that during last night's show he noticed two boys at the front staring towards his midriff during 'Later Tonight'. His flies were undone. 'I thought, how do you cope with this in front of 7,000 people?' He moved his hand over for the rest of the song, then at the end adjusted the velcro in the darkness.
They talk about Andrew Bull. Ivan and the tour accountant Mike have given him so much grief over the Levi's gaff that he has agreed to cover another 10,000 Hong Kong dollars of their expenses. Then they talk about earthquakes (they're scared of them) and censorship. Someone phones the room to tell them they're on TV and we tune in just in time to see a snippet of the 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?' video. It has subtitles.
'. . . In This World, That We Live . . .' it reads.
'Uhghhh,' moans Neil tetchily. 'Let's get the words right, shall we?'
It finishes and they return to the theme of how boring it is to repeat oneself. 'Perhaps we should have three shows,' suggests Neil, 'that we run in repertoire, like Richard II, Edward II and Richard III. Opera companies do that as well.' They have a keen sense of how differently they do things and, in interviews, a keen sense of advertising it. We discuss Neil's dressing-gown in 'Left To My Own Devices': 'I wonder whether anyone else has ever written a song with the word "dressing-gown".' One immediately pops into his mind, the Beatles' 'She's Leaving Home': "'Father snores as his wife gets into her dressing-gown,"' he quotes. 'It sounds a very Pet Shop Boys word somehow.'
They reminisce about the press conference and Chris's 'We're not a live band really' showstopper.
'I was in a bit of a droll, sarky kind of a frame of mind,' he explains.
'I thought you were doing a brilliant impersonation of a pop star at a press conference,' congratulates Neil. 'It was real John Lennon stuff.'
Neil says that last night he nearly dedicated 'It's Alright' to the Chinese students. Chris stopped him. 'I said to Chris before we went back on and he said, "What you've always said about pop stars is that they don't know any more about it than anybody else - probably less." So I didn't, and he was right. It's cheap. You're just playing to the crowd, aren't you? What you're saying is, "Aren't I a wonderful person . . .?" It's what so many flamin' pop groups do and it kind of nauseates me, so I didn't do it.'
Each time the show comes up they are quick to be excited about any aspect of it - the lighting, the dancers, the film - any aspect apart from their own role in it. It's not modesty in any simple sense - in a simple sense they're not modest - more that they seem to imagine the idea of them on-stage as something of an embarrassment.
They discuss their favourite moments: 'King's Cross', the film for 'Domino Dancing'.
'That's brilliant,' says Neil, 'because it's all quite serious and not just a lot of jolly fun.'
This seems to be a fear: that anyone might see the show as nothing more than 'jolly fun'. 'I don't like the idea of mindless entertainment,' says Neil forcefully.
Eventually I tease a little unqualified enthusiasm out of them.
'Not only have we done a show,' says Neil, 'which sounds good and everything but also it's one of the most spectacular shows, I think, that's ever been done in terms of pop music.' It's this phrase - edited to 'one of the most spectacular shows in pop music ever' - that Smash Hits use as the headline to my piece. Afterwards I discover that it was their second attempt. The first headline, born of their amazement at seeing the on-stage photos, was 'Flamin' Nora, Take A Look At Those Threads!'

The photos for the Smash Hits cover were taken in the foyer of the Brixton Academy, in rehearsal before they left England. Neil is in his 'Domino Dancing' shirt, Chris in a yellow hooded top and dark glasses. They both look cheerful. Usually - as a rule - Smash Hits insists on commissioning all its own photos, but in this case the Pet Shop Boys chose the photographer, Paul Rider, and EMI paid for the photos and supplied them. There has been a long history of Smash Hits rejecting Pet Shop Boys photos as uncommercial; this time Smash Hits were pleased.

Neil: The first photo-session we ever did as the Pet Shop Boys was with Eric (Watson) before we went to New York to see Bobby 0. It was on the first 'West End Girls' cover. We had the idea of it just being our eyes.
Chris: Eric bought us white t-shirts and we ripped them.
Neil: Then for the second photo-session we both wore Nike tops - they were the first thing we bought in New York when we went to record and at the time were totally 'black'. You couldn't buy them in England. We wanted to look New York. My hair was swept back and Chris had a per n, because he wanted to look like Bobby 0. I suppose we were both image conscious in a way.
Chris: Now it's basically the same - we just take along the clothes we like to a photo-session.
Most people would assume that you're more calculating than that about how you look.
Neil: What do they think?
I think there's an idea that you've taken scrupulous care both in putting together each new image and in how each image has been projected.
Neil: They're very rarely thought out to the degree you're suggesting there: that we have a specific idea and buy the clothes to get it together. People always think we're more clever after the event.
Yes, but people always want to believe that pop stars are incredibly sophisticated and conniving, don't they?
Neil: What you do - and I'm sure any group that thinks about how it presents itself; though to be quite honest I don't think that there are many who do - is make use of what you've got. We'll decide something each to wear beforehand but we don't necessarily think about whether it's going to work together, because we think it will work together somehow anyway.
Chris: Most pop photographs - not so much now but they were - are of the band looking happy and jolly, like a snapshot. We always wanted to be different from them. We did some pictures where we specifically wanted to . . .
Neil: . . . Iook horrible.
Chris: . . . so you can see our skins. Most pop groups they try and look really nice.
Neil: Also, most groups try to look like all other groups. Their idea of what they should look like is other photographs of such-and-such. Whereas what we were trying to do - and a lot of this is down to Eric - is to not look glamorous. At the beginning the person who had an influence on the way we looked - or the way I looked - is Eric. Eric thought of the long coat. He was the only person with whom we used to have a meaningful discussion about our image and we all agreed that we didn't want to look 'cosmetic', to use Eric's word. Eric was bored of taking cosmetic pictures for Smash Hits and I was bored with looking at them. We wanted to look different. We wanted to stand out from pop stars like Duran Duran and Culture Club. We didn't want to look pretty. We wanted to look a bit . . . spooky.
Weren't you worried that you'djust look boring?
Neil: No, not really. We've never considered ourselves to be boring.
Chris: I don't think the pictures are boring. They have a lot to them.
Neil: We had the idea they should look like stills from films: 'something just happened' or 'something is about to happen'. Some of the early ones were unbelievably pretentious. Having said that, then the photo that was used most, the one outside the studio where we both look unbelievably good-looking due to some freak of the light because it's from a distance and there's no skin detail, was a cosmetic picture.
Chris: But it was taken outdoors. It was just the way the light happened to be.
When did you realize that the Pet Shop Boys had an image?
Neil: Quite early on, because the thing people always said to us was 'Why don't you smile?' They still say that to us. In actual fact we'd totally refuse to smile in pictures in those days, totally refuse.
Chris: A smile in a photograph is a false thing. Why would you smile during a photograph, which is a terribly boring and tedious situation?
Neil (to Chris): Because the photographer says something to you.
Chris: But that would be false . . . contrived.
But there will always be some smiling shots in a photo-session. The point surely is that you'd never approve them, that you'd censor them. So it isn't really just the logic of the situation, it isn't just being very uncontrived. You have to make a conscious decision to veto them.
Chris: It goes back to what we were saying about stills from a film. If you're smiling it changes the whole story.
So you are trying to present a particular attitude, a particular story that includes 'how the Pet Shop Boys are'?
Neil: Yes, and there's also the attitude 'we are not begging for anything'. We are not pleading for you to like us. We weren't saying, 'Come on! Buy us! Aren't we just too adorable for words?', like most groups do. They want to look cute. One of the reasons we like the cover of 'Please' was that the photo was so small you could hardly see us, and when you did we were staring out looking a bit spooky again.
And was it also that you would have found it too embarrassing to posefor shameless pop pictures?
Neil: We've always had that, although recently we've given in in a way that doesn't altogether make me happy. For instance the Smash Hits cover doesn't make me happy. What annoys me is that over the last two or three years the jolliness of pop music has taken over, overpoweringly, so that you can't really do anything, in Smash Hits terms, that you could have done. Five years ago you could have presented something as being weird. Think of the Depeche Mode cover where three of them are out of focus, and in the foreground, with a kind of red filter over it, is Martin Gore wearing a dress. It was very exciting at the time; the first time Depeche Mode were openly 'pervy' in the teen market. Compare that with the Pet Shop Boys advertising their tour, sitting on a box smiling in an 'aren't we pleased with ourselves?' way (a description of the Smash Hits cover in question).
So what do you think that says about pop music?
Neil: I think the idea of having any content or influence or subversion - I always think 'subversion' basically means 'titillation' in pop music, but anyway - of turning things upside down, of 'it means more than it seems to mean' . . . all of that has left pop music in the main. In terms of chart music it has become totally careerist. So, if you ask a pop group now, 'What would you do to become famous?' and they say, 'Absolutely anything'. To them the idea is to become famous. We never set out to be famous. When I was seventeen years old I wanted to be famous, but when I was thirty-one . . .
Do you make compromises now, like the Smash Hits cover, because you know it works and because, though you might not have wanted to becomefamous, you now want to stayfamous?
Neil (sidestepping the question): There's always been the notion that people get too bored with you if you're too available.
But you've given in often.
Neil: Yes, we have given in and I'll tell you why we've given in: exhaustion. Exhaustion over fighting battles. (To Chris) Do you agree?
Chris: Yeah. It takes a lot of effort to get what we want. Smash Hits reject pictures, The Face reject pictures. (The tour logo, a black and white photo of Neil and Chris representing Batman and Robin, is a rejected cover of The Face.) For that specific cover of Smash Hits we had a whole tour to put together so to start faffing around with a photo-session . . . that was done in a brief fifteen minutes taken out of rehearsal time.
Neil: Ever since the first time we were on the cover of Smash Hits, we've had problems. (For their first cover Eric Watson took a photo of them in hooded Paninaro-style jackets coming out of complete blackness; it was rejected.) Steve Bush (Smash Hits editor, 1985-7) used to be criticized because he'd never use a photograph of anyone smiling on the cover of Smash Hits. For three years no one smiled; he used to like gloomy covers and I thought he was right, because he had a rather aspirational idea of the cover, that it should be slightly pretentious. Also he'd identified that that had been what the audiences in the New Romantic era had wanted, something rather aspirational. The Pet Shop Boys are almost the only pop group that operate in an aspirational way now. We're sort of saying, 'There could be more ... there could be more than just selling entertainment.' If you look at all the big groups now: Bros are selling entertainment, Kylie Minogue is selling entertainment, obviously Stock Aitken Waterman are selling entertainment. They're saying, 'Let's face it -there's nothing more to it than that.'

Tonight's food, Mr Bull's treat, is Vietnamese. Courses come and go -there are about ten. Neil asks for some white wine. He is brought two to choose from and it is plain from his face that he is less than impressed by the selection. 'I'll have the one with the cat on it,' he decides.
Chris suggests a novel solution to the Hong Kong refugee problem: they could be moved to Liverpool. 'The architecture is right,' he proclaims. That was where he was a student and starts off a chain of reminiscences: how he used to watch Dallas with his friends in their lodgings, drinking cans of Skol lager and eating Yorkie bars; how he went to see second-rate punk band the Vibrators and, drunk, spat at them, 'because everyone else did'; about his year's practical experience working at Michael Aukett Associates in London, where he helped build a staircase in Milton Keynes; how for the last three months of that year he was so bored by the working life that he'd sleep on his drawing board all day and party at the Camden Palace all night. 'I was quite pleased when the Pet Shop Boys became successful,' he says.
The final course- a half-pineapple stuffed with rice, doused in a colourless spirit and then set alight - is served and a little is eaten by the few diners who have the endurance. Neil leans back and laughs contentedly. He has had some of every course and has only been put into the shadows by Dominic. Dominic, though slender, is already famous on tour for his appetite. Tonight he has had seconds of many of the courses while waiting impatiently for the next. 'Well,' says Neil, 'on behalf of myself and Dominic I'd like to say . . . is that all?' Everyone laughs. A few minutes later he is clutching his stomach and cheerfully confessing, 'I'll probably be sick in a moment, but that's rock'ntroll.'
In fact he does feel ill throughout the night. At one point he wakes up and thinks he is hallucinating. He panics a little. He is in a strange hotel room and - unless he is going mad - there is a sinister, low-pitched rumbling noise above his head. Confused, he eventually drifts back into a troubled sleep. It is only in the morning he discovers that Ivan, who has the room directly above his, has been enjoying a late-night jacuzzi.

Chapter Five

After the meal we are expected at Andrew Bull's club, Canton's, for a party in our honour.
'We might not get in if we're lucky,' says Chris hopefully.
Just as we are about to leave the restaurant Steve Beaver walks over. He announces, apropos of nothing, that two weeks ago he met Bobby O.
Ears perk up. Though they have had years of expensive legal wrangles with him, Neil and Chris still have a sneaking admire tion for Bobby O. and also a bewildered fascination about what has happened to him. When they worked with him he was a quite well-known, almost respected, cult disco producer, a fanatic businessman and a fitness maniac. Since then he has made a few decent records, has found God and has written a book refuting Darwinian evolution. To this day he still phones them up occasionally - the last call, a few months ago, was to tell Neil that their latest LP, 'Introspective', wasn't much good. He suggested that the two of them play him all the songs for their LP before they recorded them.
They met in 1983. Neil, working at Smash Hits, was asked to go to New York to see the Police play live and to interview Sting. He decided that he'd see Bobby O as well, so he tracked down his phone number and arranged to take him out to lunch. (In the end Bobby O insisted on paying.) At lunch, over a cheeseburger and piece of carrot cake at a place called the Applejack, Neil chatted and told Bobby O how much he admired his records. The plan, hatched before the trip, was to ask Bobby O to make a record with them, but, Neil said later, 'We thought I wouldn't dare.' In his pocket, just in case, was a tape of three songs they'd demoed - 'Opportunities', 'It's A Sin' and 'It's Not A Crime'. Eventually Neil said, 'Have you ever worked with any English groups?' and Bobby O replied, 'No, no one's ever asked me' and Neil said, 'Oh, well I'm in a group; there's just two of us actually' and Bobby O famously exclaimed, 'We'll make a record! It'll be fabulous!'
Neil pointed out that Bobby O hadn't heard any of their music, so they went back to Bobby O's office and listened to 'Opportunities' on Bobby O's ghetto blaster. 'He said "I could do this!",' Neil later joked, 'and I thought, "Well, you should be able to, because it's completely ripped off from you."'

Neil: Everyone we knew, literally everyone, knew that we were obsessed with Bobby O's records, so when I came back to the Smash Hits office and said 'We're making a record with Bobby O' there was a general celebration. Everyone at Smash Hits had been listening to Bobby O all day long; he'd had two Singles of the Fortnight.
Chris: He was releasing so many brilliant records. Weekly there'd be more.
Neil: In those days imports cost five pounds but I used to claim for them on my expenses at Smash Hits. Anyway when we came back from recording with Bobby O everyone at Smash Hits had to stand round and listen and comment. The track everyone liked best was 'Pet Shop Boys' because it was weird. Dave Hepworth (the editor at the time) heard 'Opportunities' and said, 'This could be a hit.' I didn't play them 'West End Girls' because I was too embarrassed.
It must have crossed your mind at this point that this might be serious.
Neil: Yes it did, but Chris still had another year to go at university and at this point we were never thinking in terms of Top of the Pops, we were thinking of being an incredibly hip, underground dance group. All we wanted was to make a record with Bobby O that you could buy on import at the Record Shack. That to us just seemed phenomenal. Fundamentally we wanted to be part of The Bobby O Story. That was our big aim.
Chris: It was so exciting, music, then.
Neil: There were all these incredibly thrilling records ... Arthur Baker . . . AfrikaBambaataa . . . the Freez record 'IOU' . . . 'Blue Monday' and 'Confusion' by New Order . . . Sharon Redd's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' . . .
Chris: It was new as well. When something new comes along you can just forget about anything else because it's old and this is completely new. Completely fresh.
Neil: In fact we felt we were rather lagging behind. We actually thought we'd missed the boat, particularly when 'Blue Monday' came out.

After much delay 'West End Girls' was actually first released not in America but in Britain on Epic records after Eric Watson had played it to CBS A&R man Gordon Charlton at a Fiction Factory photo-session. The NME's Charles Shaar Murray reviewed it as 'a blend of glamour and excitement that is almost perfect' and David Jensen played it on Radio One seven times in a fortnight. It reached number 121.

Neil: The problem with Bobby O wasn't the contract, it was just that it was an unworkable relationship. We were getting very frustrated. When we first recorded with him it was in a twenty-four-track studio, then suddenly we were recording in his office on an eight-track. We seemed to be going backwards.
Was he just being eccentric?
Neil (nods): Also he was saving money. We began to doubt whether Bobby O had any faith in us.
Chris: Also the records he was making himself ceased to be as good.
Neil: Everyone thought we should give him up. We never received any money from him. We never got a single penny for the original version of 'west End Girls', which has supposedly sold a million copies now. Actually when we settled we gave him all those earnings - which we weren't very happy about -and a royalty on our first three EMI albums. That was when we thought of putting a ceiling of a million dollars on what we would pay him, never dreaming that we would be successful and that he would actually earn that. But, to be honest, I've always felt that Bobby O kind of deserved the million he got. He took an amazing chance, because of the character he was, on us. Most people wouldn't have done anything.
Our idea for breaking with him was that I'd phone him up and say, 'It's not happening - we should split. How shall we go about it?' but we were persuaded that the thing to do was to send Bobby O a letter saying that the contract hadn't gone before a court, and all that rubbish.
Anyway, after it was sorted out, when we were in New York mixing 'Opportunities', we went to see him. His partner couldn't believe we were in an office having spent a year in a legal battle with him. We were sitting around laughing about our lawyers. He gave us a piece of advice: 'Whenever you're in a lawsuit with someone, behave like an animal - that's the only way you'll win.' And actually that's quite a sensible piece of advice, though it sounds a bit horrible.
Chris: Didn't he say it was like finishing with a girlfriend?
Neil: Oh, he went into a major speech: 'The Pet Shop Boys aren't like a friend, it's like you're my girlfriend, that's how much I care about you.' It was very sad. He was very, very hurt.

Steve Beaver tells them that Bobby O has changed some more. The man who was famous for his dedication to physical perfection now weighs 300 pounds and says he wants ten children. He is recording an LP of versions of 'West End Girls' with trumpet player Tom Browne. Neil and Chris exchange looks that can only mean 'Oh dear . . .'
We all troop off to Mr Bull's club, Canton's, but don't stay long.

Sunday, 2July

Panic. We have known for the last few days that Geoffrey Howe, the British foreign secretary, is arriving today. Now a demonstration of around 200,000 people is expected to 'greet' him at the airport. Last night this had seemed funny - Neil and Chris had been considering staging photos with the crowds behind them so that it looked like a spontaneous outbreak of Pet Shop Boys mania - but now it is a problem. People tell Ivan that the airport will be inaccessible and most of the tour party are booked on an afternoon flight. Ivan investigates whether everyone can be smuggled through the freight terminal, but even that is impossible. He considers getting everyone to the airport before the demonstration, but they'd have to wait for hours. Luggage goes up and down the lifts. Eventually he tracks down a Pet Shop Boys fan in the airline and mysteriously thirty previously booked seats become available on the following day's flight.
Nevertheless some of us are already booked on an earlier flight today, beating the crowds. This advance party is of those who don't have working visas forJapan - theJapanese promoter Mr Udo had advised that if we are caught entering the country it might jeopardize the band's entry. So we carry out a dumb charade, unlabelling our baggage and standing in different queues in Japanese immigration, pretending not to know each other.

Monday, 3July

A while after the others arrive at the Tokyo hotel, Neil calls me to his room to discuss the book once more. There is still no agreement about what I'm actually doing on the tour. He is wearing a kimono. He says he is a little annoyed. Tom Watkins, their manager, has just arrived, popped in and immediately asked Neil why he needs a piano in his room.
'I don't think he thinks I can play it,' huffs Neil.
Chris arrives.
'We don't want to concentrate too much on the story - the "how they became famous" story,' insists Neil, 'because, like most stories, it's not very interesting.'
It is quite interesting, I say, but not really what this book is about.
'What is this book about?' asks Chris.
Silence.
'It'd be good if you could just pick what it was that we're about,' he continues, 'then look at everything in terms of that. Like, supposing we were the Deconstructionists of Pop. You could then apply that theory to whatever we've done.'
But, I object, are they really just any one thing, like the Deconstructionists of Pop?
'No,' he admits glumly. He sighs. 'We're nothing.'
This - 'we're nothing' - is a notion that Neil keenly jumps upon. 'You could apply that to the whole. We're nothing, so we have something around us.'
They laugh.
'It's the same with everything we do,' exclaims Chris, as if we've really hit on something here. 'We're not there!'
'Whatever we do,' Neil chortles, 'we're not normally the main part of it.' He considers. 'In a sense we've stood against everything in pop or rock music that anyone else likes, haven't we? We started this tour by saying, "All rock shows are boring." That is a sort of theme to what we do.'
It was the theme of their film, doing nothing while things happened around you, I remind them.
'Yes,' Neil agrees, changing the point, 'though actually by doing a film we fell into a rock cliché.'
Yes, I nod, but you can't oppose everything at once. You have to do a lot of things the same to form the background against which the things you do differently show up. Of course you do normal things: make records, go on tour etc., etc. Those are all rock clichés. It would be nonsense to try to avoid that. But you have an attitude based on an impulse to invert or oppose whatever you can within that. Anyway your most obvious driving force - in opposition to everything you're both saying - is simply that you both obsessively love pop music.
No one quite knows where this leaves us.
'It should be like that Derek Jarman book,' says Chris. He means The Last of England. 'It's about the film but it's also his autobiography at the same time,' he declares. Then he turns to Neil. 'Is that right? Is it like that? I've never actually read it.'
'It's a kind of a rant, as well, that book,' answers Neil.
'Oh,' says Chris, 'a rant! That'd be good.'
'It's not a bad title actually,' considers Neil, 'A Rant.' He rethinks. 'It's a bit Paul Morley actually.'
What about the other problem? I ask them. The book is from my perspective but it is their tale.
'It's got to be your perspective,' confirms Neil.
So, I say, if I say something that you fundamentally and totally disagree with, you won't try to take it out?
'Well . . .' says Neil, laughing.
'Of course we will,' guffaws Chris.

We are joined by Tom Watkins. Tom Watkins likes to describe himself as a 'rich fat bastard - and incredibly lucky'. Today he is wearing a peaked leather cap.
'Tom!' exclaims Chris. 'I need a hat like that.'
'That hat!' says Neil. 'It's in the show!'
'Call it $100 a performance, shall we?' smiles Tom.
Earlier Tom has given Neil and Chris expensive watches to celebrate 'five Massive years', the five years that they will have been together in October. (It was the choice of this that Pete's charade in Hong Kong was about.) Their management contract is for five years and at present has not been renewed.
'There's no instructions in it,' Chris now complains of his watch. 'How do you do it?'
'Don't ask me, love,' says Tom. 'I can't even plug my hair rollers in.'
As Neil chats to Tom, Chris and I talk some more about the book. I try to explain the structure I have in mind.
'You know, my favourite books are things like In Cold Blood,' he says, 'where a chapter is two pages long. It's just so easy to read. My least favourite books are where there's big chunks of type and there's nowhere to stop before you go to bed. I'm reading Joe Orton's diaries at the moment. I just like all the conversation and quotes from people like Kenneth Williams and Kenneth Halliwell and people on the bus. Those are the interesting bits. When he's going on about his script for Up Against It . . .' Chris rolls his eyes to indicate the tedium of it all.
All that is going to be said now has been said. Our decision has been to decide nothing. Instead we go to dinner.

Can you remember the actual conversation that led you to the name Pet Shop Boys?
Neil: It was actually, as everyone knows, when Chris used to stay in this flat in Ealing. It was just before we went over to do the record with Bobby O. He used to know three boys who worked in a pet shop and we used to tell them - in fact I remember telling them as we were driving in a car through Ealing - that they should start a group. One of them was musical; he used to have this enormous Wurlitzer.
So you merely suggested that they should start a group because you thought that everybody should?
Neil: They already had a group but they didn't have a name.
Chris: And we said you should do 'How Much Is That Doggie In The Window' and call yourselves the Pet Shop Boys.
Neil: We thought it was funny because it sounded like an American hip hop group like, say, the Peech Boys.
Chris: Before we went to America we spent quite a lot of time trying to think of a name. We used to do it over dinner for ages.
Neil: We were always slightly embarrassed by the name, because we thought it sounded a bit twee and camp.
Chris: I couldn't tell anyone what the group was called.
Neil: Chris was always embarrassed by the name. Not because of hamsters.
Chris: Just because it sounded so stupid.
Neil: It was just silly, more than anything else.
On the way to dinner Ivan tells me about his previous visits here, driving round Tokyo with Bros. Last time Matt put his head out of the window wearing a Michael Jackson mask and sang along to a tape of Michael Jackson songs. The Japanese were hoodwinked. 'People were walking into walls.'
In the restaurant we perch on stools at a counter surrounding a raised platform just below the height of the counter, where cooks prepare the food before passing it to us on large wooden paddles. Huge prawns are grilled on their backs. With alarm we realize that they are moving, their legs frantically paddling the air as they cook to death. We are disgusted but eat them anyway. In Japan everything is unbelievably expensive. The cheapest thing available on our hotel room service is a toasted hamand-cheese sandwich, yours for Ł8. Tonight's meal, it is later muttered, cost about Ł100 a head. There are about ten of us.
As we eat, Chris canvasses opinion about whether he should bleach his hair. 'You have to be blond once in your life,' he explains earnestly.
Somebody suggests that it might make him look like Jimmy Somerville. This goes down badly.
Neil reminisces about his own blond period when he was at college in London. 'In 1973 everyone was blond in Tottenham,' he says. When he went back to Newcastle for the holidays he dyed it back brown, expecting his parents not to notice, but of course they did. 'We used to buy women's shoes,' he recalls, 'because you couldn't get good men's platform shoes. They were always two sizes too small though.'
We wander out into the night. It is impossible to get taxis here in the late evening and so we have to trudge the two or so miles back to the hotel.
'Typical,' huffs Chris. 'I bet this doesn't happen to Bros . . .'

In the hotel bar (beer Ł4.50) we carry on drinking. Kaz, who is from Virgin 10 Publishing, the music publishers who administer the Pet Shop Boys songs, asks them if they'd like to meet Ryuichi Sakamoto. As founder of the Yellow Magic Orchestra, actor (most famously in Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence), collaborator with David Sylvian and a solo composer, he is one of Japan's most famous artists. He has expressed a desire to meet Neil and Chris.
'Oh gawd,' says Neil. They don't much like things like this.
Chris shakes his head. They discuss whether they like Ryuichi Sakamoto.
'What has he done?' asks Chris.
'He did "Forbidden Colours",' says Neil. This was a single with David Sylvian some years ago, a beautiful song.
'That was brilliant,' Chris agrees.
They decide that he may come and meet them back-stage if he likes.
'I can tell him how much I like "Forbidden Colours",'says Chris.
I ask whether simply saying this would be very tactful. How does he feel, four years on, if people saunter up and - ignoring anything he's done since - say they like 'West End Girls'?
Chris shrugs. 'I went up to the Bee Gees and said, "I love 'Saturday Night Fever'"
We are interrupted by the lighting designer, Patrick, who does a fantastic spiel as one of the rock'n'roll aristocracy. He chats in a warm, fatherly way about how the Pet Shop Boys might do a stadium show as he recently did in Brazil with Tina Turner - 'Tina' - his tone suggesting that he, Patrick, can make their passage into the world of rock'n'roll grown-ups a smooth one. The Pet Shop Boys are but juniors - albeit accomplished ones - in his world.
Patrick tells us how a large trunk accompanies 'Mick' wherever he goes. In it are the learned tomes a gentleman might need to have with him. 'Indonesian poetry and things,' says Patrick, as if for him, too, life without the greatest muses of the South Pacific at hand is unbearably barren.
Chris and I discuss the book a little more but it is too late and we are too tired.
'Couldn't it be a fictional thing?' he asks forlornly - a desperate stab, this - 'about two people who might be the Pet Shop Boys?'

A story has shadowed you about the meaning of your name. Offen people suggest that it's 'something to do with hamsters'; the full rumour is that 'Pet Shop Boys' are gay American men who derive pleasurefrom putting doctored hamsters up their bottoms. When were you first aware of this story?
Neil: That wasn't until 'West End Girls' came out. I remember sitting in Epic records doing an interview with Betty Page (a music journalist) on the telephone and she said, 'Well, we all know what the name means.' I said, 'Well? what does it mean?' She told me and I was absolutely horrified. We discussed changing the name but then we thought, 'Oh well . . .'
So is it a documented term?
Neil: I don't believe that it is. I've asked people in New York who might know and they've never heard of it. I personally think it's a completely apocryphal story. I once met Fiona Russell Powell (another journalist, also briefly in ABC) and she told me she knew about it. I actually just don't believe it, to be honest. But, I mean, it's there, it's part of our history and we've learned to live with it. When 'West End Girls' was a hit Simon Bates was going to tell the story out on Radio One. We were in Italy at the time so Tom phoned him up and asked him not to.
Chris: He announced, 'I've got some really big news about the Pet Shop Boys, so tune in tomorrow,' then when you listened in the next day he did give a story and it was something really trivial that Tom had given him.
But it keeps coming up, doesn't it? y you remember, Stephen Fry introduced you at Before the Act (in June 1988) by saying that he'd just been told what the next group's name meant and that he wasftabbergasted.
Neil: Yes, it's endlessly referred to, endlessly referred to.
I suppose people think you've been very clever.
Neil: This is a classic Pet Shop Boys situation. People assume that 'it's an incredibly clever injoke that Tennant and Lowe thought of'. In fact 'Tennant and Lowe' didn't think the name was the remotest bit clever. We just thought, as we've said a million times before, that it sounded a bit like a hip hop group.

Chapter Six

Tuesday, 4July

The next day Janet Street-Porter arrives. She is either the most hated woman in broadcasting or the visionary who has revolutionized British youth television, depending upon whom you speak to. She is here on business as the BBC's Head of Youth Programmes, to investigate the possibility of making a TV show later in the year with the Pet Shop Boys. But she is also very good friends with both Tom Watkins and the Pet Shop Boys. One reason they like her is her tremendous, almost preposterous enthusiasm: 'Nothing is ever boring when Janet's around.' And here she comes, up the back stairs of the Tokyo Budokan, spotting Tom Watkins at the top .
'Where have you been? I've phoned your room thirty-five times. I had to go shopping on my own.'
'How did it go?'
'I've spent Ł100.'
It is impossible to tell whether this is good or bad, too much or not enough.

The first Japanese show is quietly triumphant. Back-stage Janet raves.
'I love the lights! I could tell it was done by someone who'd never done a rock show.'
Patrick, they tell her - he of last night's tales of 'Mick' and 'Tine' - does little else but rock shows and is soon off to do the Rolling Stones.
She barely pauses for a second: who cares?
Stevie Hayes, the person from EMI in Britain who has accompanied Janet over here, comes in and explains that he also has with him people from children's Saturday morning TV show Motormouth. They are over in Japan, he explains, filming Jason Donovan. It is this final piece of information that is jumped upon with interest.
'Jason Donovan?' Neil exclaims. 'Is he coming to see us?'
Chris chats amiably to two blokes with flat-top haircuts. Stevie Hayes walks over and belatedly introduces them as the presenters from Motormouth.
'This is Motormouth?' says Chris, feigning alarm. He has accidentally been friendly to the media.
'I thought they looked familiar,' says Neil. 'Dainton - throw them out.'
They look alarmed but it's a joke. Janet puts herself centrestage again with an entertaining account of Bobby Brown's London concerts. 'Disappointing,' she judges, once she has taken us through every piece of trouser-dropping innuendo in his repertoire. She dismisses the after-show party as 'so exclusive that no one was there at all'.
Rob interrupts to ask Neil and Chris whether they will go next door and say hello to some important folk from EMI Japan.
'No,' says Chris.
'They can come in here,' says Neil diplomatically.
'One at a time,' stipulates Chris. 'And they can say "hello".'
And that, more or less, is what happens.
Now Chris, as he often does, begins to enjoy complaining. In Japan gifts are customary, but as yet they have been given nothing by the promoter. 'Where are our presents from Mr Udo?' he inquires of no one in particular. He moves on to the situation of his on-stage lighting. Back in London he had complained whenever lights were put on him to show him doing nothing but playing the keyboard. Now he is furious at frequently being left in darkness. 'Why,' he sulks, 'are there two lights on Neil and none on me?'
The Motormouth people explain they must be up early tomorrow to surf with Jason Donovan, and leave. Once they're out of earshot Chris explains that he's met one of them, Tony, before in a club. Tony had come up to Chris and asked when the Pet Shop Boys would do an interview on Motormouth. Chris hadout of genuine ignorance - simply said 'Who are you?' and then the friend Chris had been talking to had a go at Tony for his lack of manners and he had slunk off. Tonight Chris had apparently alluded to this previous meeting and Tony had sheepishly muttered, 'I was pissed.'
'I want to go surfing with Jason Donovan,' announces Neil. 'Just think. Tomorrow Jason will probably be in this room.' Stevie Hayes has told us Jason plans to come to tomorrow night's show.
Pete makes Chris some hot buttered toast. He happily munches it with a glass of the champagne they drink after each concert in his other hand. This post-show toast and champagne will from now on become a routine.
'Can we go and eat?' asks Chris.
'I want to go back to the hotel and shower first,' insists Neil.
Chris starts complaining about this.
'That can be a chapter in the book!' Neil suddenly exclaims. 'A chapter of Chris's complaints.'
A few seconds later Chris asks Pete, 'Where's my second slice of toast?'
'Write it down! Complaint!' shouts Neil.
Neil and Chris had been quite looking forward to signing a few autographs but we have lingered in the dressing-room far too long and the over-efficient Japanese stewards have cleared all the fans away. As we coast down the long park driveway in the minibus provided by Mr Udo a few straggling girls spot us and we draw up at a junction so that Neil and Chris can sign through a window. As we sit there more and more fans gather until Neil decides the situation is getting out of hand.
'We'll go now,' he says to the driver.
Nothing happens.
'Off! Off!' he shouts in his best 'are you deaf, you silly man?' voice.
Nothing happens. Nothing happens not because the driver is deaf, nor because he is stupid, but because the traffic light in front of us is on red. Neil looks a little embarrassed.
'That's another chapter,' he sighs. 'Me being bossy.'

There are three great themes that recur when people write about you, particularly when they're being complimentary. The.first is irony.
Neil (scoffing at the idea of this): Yes. I'm supposed to be the irony merchant . . . my ironic detachment . . .
The whole of what the Pet Shop Boys do is often presented as an exercise in irony, isn't it?
Neil (wearily): Yes. Of course elements of it have been -'Opportunities' . . . 'Shopping' .
But those are simply ironic songs that you've done, which is very differentfrom suggesting that the whole point of the Pet Shop Boys is to be ironic. The picture that is often painted is that the Pet Shop Boys pastiche and in some sense criticize pop musicfrom the inside by being pop music's residentfull-time ironists.
Neil: Yes. And there's not a lot of truth in that. Someone once said about us that we made 'pop records about pop records'. I don't think we do and, in fact, I don't really like that kind of thing. Most of what we do is meant totally sincerely. When we started out we got into hi-energy and hip hop music and we liked the power and the rawness and the excitement of it, like a natural force. And we've always tried to make records, in the main, that had the same delirium and excitement, or a very strong feeling about them. Chris really likes 'up' records, more than I do, but my voice cannot sound 'up' when I sing. I literally cannot do it.
Hence yourfamous 'deadpan vocal style'?
Neil: Yes. (Laughs.)
And would it be right to presume that you'd actually prefer people to think not only that you're not as a rule ironic but, on the contrary, you're more serious and more sincere than most pop musicians?
Neil: Yes, I think we are. There are loads of people who do things because they're cynical and I don't think we do those things. People always tend to assume that if a thing's done in such an over-the-top way - like 'It's A Sin', for instance - it's meant to be funny, and of course we just like over-the-top things; they're not normally funny at all.
Also we normally do things that we think the people we don't like wouldn't like. Hence '. . . Let's Make Lots Of Money' - that was the entire motivation behind that really. And sometimes the inspiration behind a song is something funny, though often the song itself isn't remotely funny. Like 'I Want A Dog' - I thought 'what a funny title for a song', but the song itself is meant to be rather touching and true. When I was at Smash Hits the one everyone liked like that was one called 'I've Got Plans Involving You'. So we try to be funny sometimes, but I think of 90 per cent of our songs as being totally romantic. I love lush romanticism and I think Chris likes it sometimes too.

As we travel back to the hotel they discuss what they'd like from Mr Udo.
'I haven't decided yet,' says Neil.
'I want a Walkman,' says Chris.
Neil looks at Chris as if he's gone off his trolley. 'You can get a Walkman from anyone,' he points out.
'Oh.' Chris reconsiders. 'A Mitsubishi jeep then.'
'I want a Mitsubishi jeep,' agrees Neil, 'and I can't even drive. I'll give it to my mum.'
They reflect on our visit from Motormouth. I mention that I have read an interview with Tony Gregory in which he repeatedly mentioned how much he liked the Pet Shop Boys.
'Oh, I wish you'd told me that before,' says Neil. He considers how he behaved. 'Actually,' he concludes with relief, 'I was quite nauseatingly nice.'
Then he returns to a theme that is becoming increasingly familiar. 'Jason Donovan is coming! This time tomorrow he will be in this bus.'
'This bus' is actually little to be proud of. Plainly it is used to ferry all of Mr Udo's touring acts to the Budokan. It is covered in graffiti:
'Metallica walked all over you . . .
'Europe invadedJapan.'
'I'm still alive! Dion.'
'Thank you Japan - Aerosmith.'
'Keep Satan warm.'
'Poison 8~89 Tokyo kicked ass.'
'Rock My World G N'R'
'Was (Not Was) 89.'
'Thanks for not dying.'
'Guns N'Roses rock the world. Thank you.'
'Thank God for the bomb. Ozzy.'
'We came, we saw, we couldn't play.'
'We should write a song called "Camp David",' says Neil for no obvious reason.

At the hotel a few fans are waiting. One, called Ekko, always follows them whenever they are in Japan. She is twenty-four and works for an important company whose over-intimate relationship with top politicians is in the process of bringing the Japanese government down. She was in England when 'West End Girls' was first a hit and when she heard the follow up, 'Love Comes Quickly', she says 'my heart broke' because she liked the song so much and she thought that the Pet Shop Boys were beautiful.
When they made their first promotional visit to Japan in June 1986 she scoured the passenger lists for incoming flights (apparently possible in Japan) until she spotted their names. She was the only fan to meet the plane. 'I thought they were pop stars but they just looked ordinary,' she explains, meaning it as a compliment. She also confesses that she was surprised to discover that Neil's hair was thinning, but immediately looks very embarrassed, as if she wishes she hadn't mentioned it.
When she later visited England she went round to Neil's flat - she claims, mysteriously, that 'a friend' knew the address -something she now says she regrets. In Japan you only get a few days' holiday a year and she is spending most of hers following them on this tour. It will cost her about Ł500, including hotel rooms for the days they are out of her home town, Tokyo. She hasn't told anyone at work the reason she has taken the time off. She says she especially likes the words, though she thinks they are 'difficult' and doubts that she has understood all the meanings. She thinks that Neil is 'kind and gentle' and that Chris is 'cute'.
'They are nice people but I know they are pop star,' she concludes with sad resignation. 'Between them and me, long distance.'
She is familiar to all those around the Pet Shop Boys. This afternoon Tom spotted her in the hotel foyer. 'That bleedin' Ekko,' he grunted.

'All the giant egos and tiny minds,' pronounces Janet, inspecting the bus graffiti on our way to dinner. She spots Jon Bon Jovi's name. 'I think he's bald and wears a wig,' she declares. 'It all makes sense. He's got no eyebrows and his dad's a hairdresser '
Dainton tells her that they have met before. She burst past him into a fight involving some punks on the King's Road in 1976, gathering a story, he says, for the News of the World. She laughs.
We arrive at a shabu shabu restaurant, where the speciality is very thinly sliced raw beef that you cook yourself in boiling pots on the table. We are all fitted with kiddie-style peach aprons. Janet tells us unrepeatable media gossip and then talks business. Her proposal is for a TV show at Christmas in which famous folk sing Pet Shop Boys songs. They'd have the Pet Shop Boys' previous collaborators - LizaMinnelli, Dusty Springfield - and others. She suggests George Michael.
'Do you think he'd do it?' asks Neil, doubtfully.
'If you put it the right way,' says Janet. She doesn't explain what the right way might be.
Janet mentions, with theatrical shame, that her current project is a live broadcast of Pink Floyd from Venice.
'When I first met Chris,' says Neil, 'I went back to his flat and he had all these Pink Floyd cassettes. I was shocked.'
'I still like them,' protests Chris somewhat surprisingly. 'There were only two: "Dark Side Of The Moon" and "Wish You Were Here".'
'No,' corrects Neil. 'You had "The Wall". On cassette,' he adds, as if this somehow compounds the offense..
'Oh yes,' concedes Chris, 'but that's not very good.'

The second great theme that is often associated with the Pet Shop Boys is that of being camp.
Neil: Well, I don't think those people understand what camp is. People misuse the word totally. Being camp is us doing a film with Barbara Windsor - that's totally camp, there's no two ways about that. The video for 'Heart' is camp. The word 'camp' means 'overtly theatrical', doesn't it? People always go on about 'camp icons' - and Dusty Springfield and Liza Minnelli are, I suppose, camp icons (Chris laughs at the 'I suppose') - but I don't think we use them in that way. If we did some huge finger-waving ballad with Dusty where she's in a glittery dress on-stage that would be camp.
Chris (mischievously): Like the video for 'What Have I Done To Deserve This?'? (Laughs heartily.)
Why have you been laughing throughout this conversation, Chris?
Chris: I just think it's funny, arguing that Liza Minnelli and Dusty Springfield aren't camp.
Neil: No, they are, they are camp. But I don't think we've used them in a camp way.
Anyway, generally you think the idea that the Pet Shop Boys are camp is inaccurate?
Neil: Part of my general theory about the Pet Shop Boys is that we're misunderstood in a rather embarrassing way. We do things and people think they're meant to be funny, or meant to be camp, or meant to be ironic, and they've always been meant to be totally serious, with one or two exceptions.
Chris (spluttering): One or two exceptions!!? (He roars with laughter.)
Neil (ignoring Chris): People see our entire career as an essay in irony and camp. And that, I suppose, is the one really genuinely camp thing about us; it is that, like genuine camp, it is meant totally sincerely. There hasn't been an element of irony or camp in 90 per cent of it. I suppose it's a bit sad from our point of view that it's interpreted as being camp, because it certainly wasn't meant to be.
Chris: But there aren't loads of letters in the fan mail saying, 'I thought that was brilliant - it's so camp!'
Neil: No, it's never the fans.
Chris: It's critics. (He shrugs as if to add, 'Well, there you go, we don't have to worry about that then.')
Does that misinterpretationfrustrate you?
Neil: No, it's embarrassing more than anything.
Why embarrassing?
Neil: Because I realize that I've misunderstood people's reactions to us. Also I'm embarrassed that our intentions are so misunderstood. It makes me feel a bit pathetic. It makes me feel a bit pathetic that we've done something that we think is really good and sincere, and some people think it's 'a birrova laugh'.
Chris (shrugs): I don't really think about this.
Neil: He never reads the reviews. I'll tell you why it's so embarrassing - it's like that opera singer that used to perform at Carnegie Hall . .
Chris (protesting): It's nothing like that!
Neil: . . . and everyone used to go because she was terrible, to laugh at her, and she thought they went because she was a really good singer. I feel a bit like her.

Back in the restaurant Chris prepares another complaint. The set menu here costs 13,700 yen (just under Ł70) and here we are, dipping pieces of meat into a concoction of boiling water and an unidentified oil. He is not impressed.
'You come to a restaurant,' he mutters darkly, 'and you have to cook it yourself. It's a bit like being on camp.' He muses whether or not you expend more calories cooking it than you get from eating it. 'There is one kind of food that is actually like that,' he proclaims. I ask what but he doesn't know.
We discuss accents. Pete, whose accent is deep North London and sprayed with a vocabulary and grammar that is so strange yet effective that Neil frequently compares it to nineteenth century English, says that Chris gets told off when he goes home. He may be a pop star but his voice is a disgrace. 'She says,' Pete laughs, imitating Chris's mum, "'Timothy's voice has got a lot better, but Chris's is worse," then she looks at me.' He mentions, clearly thinking it's of relevance, that Chris went to a public school.
'Direct-grant school,' corrects Chris defensively.
'The same thing, isn't it?' says Pete.
'It's completely different!' Chris huffs.
At the other end of the table Neil talks to Kaz, from their publishers. Neil is berating him over his imminent move to Los Angeles.
'You can't possibly like it,' Neil insists. 'It's like Swindon.'
'No it's not!' shouts Chris up the table, for this contradicts a theory he has been expounding earlier. Years ago, when the Pet Shop Boys first went to New York, hip hop music bellowed from every window, on every corner there was breakdancing and New York was the most fabulous and exciting place on earth: Los Angeles was dull as sin. Now, he suggests, it is changing round.
'Last orders for drinks,' says Kaz, prompted by an anxious waiter. 'More of everything,' announces Neil.
'What happened to Ryuichi Sakamoto today?' complains Chris.
'He's coming tomorrow,' Kaz answers.
'Should we ask Issey Miyake to come?' ponders Neil. Issey Miyake is probably the Pet Shop Boys' favourite designer. Many of Chris's most famous outfits (the striped sunglasses on the 'Suburbia' sleeve, the 'fisherman's' affair for the 1988 BPI awards and 'Heart' sleeve, the inflatable rubber suit in which he performed 'Rent' on Live at the Palladium) are by Issey Miyake. Chris is particularly impressed because Miyake used to be an architect and Chris attributes his brilliance to the fact he has taken the design rigour of architecture and applied it to clothing.
'You should ask him,' pipes up Janet. 'He's lovely.'
'Let's face it, Chris,' says Neil, 'he was nothing till you wore those glasses.' Neil chuckles at this preposterous arrogance. 'Anyway I would like to meet him.'
'I would like him to design our second tour,' says Chris. 'It'd be fantastic . . . sculptural . . .'
And the conversation drifts elsewhere. To the best of my knowledge he is never invited.
Neil looks forward to the back-stage introductions tomorrow night. 'It'll be "Ryuichi -Jason" . . . "Jason - Ryuichi".'
Janet expounds at some length about the late-night sexual activities that go on in the park outside her house. She explains how she hates the taxi drivers, voyeurs who just drive round and round, watching, without joining in. She says she phones up the police to complain about them.
Someone mentions Hong Kong and everyone laughs about the mishaps that befell everyone who had a cheap suit made. Neil opines in his haughtiest schoolmaster tones that 'You don't get a cheap suit without getting a cheap suit.'
Neil recommends to Tom that he should get a sumo outfit, looking as like a sumo wrestler as he does.
'They'll think you're a God,' says Janet.
'Many people do,' says Tom.
We depart, leaving a table littered with undrunk alcohol.

The third quality that is harped on about is the Pet Shop Boys"Britishncss'.
Neil: Oh, that's true. For one thing, we never understood why people sing in an American accent. Hence 'West End Girls', as I've said a million times before, was meant to be a rap in a British accent.
The 'deadpan voice' and the Britishness are linked, aren't they?
Neil: Yes. And I've found it's very difficult to be deadpan on the stage. I don't like the way I do the spoken bits - my voice sounds hectoring and rather harsh. But also I think we are British in our taste. (He gestures towards Chris.) You want tea! 'We're English!'
But it's hardly pride in Britain, is it? On the most superficial level you're both forever saying things like 'the only cars to buy are German'.
Neil: Oh, we're not patriotic. (He spits out this last word as if he can only just bear to say it.)
Chris (by way of agreement): Eurghhhh!
Neil: The Britishness is that we live in Britain and our experience of life is of Britain and that's what we're about. The occasional song - like 'One More Chance' - is set in America, but for a lot of them, like 'West End Girls' or 'King's Cross', the starting point is British life in a very direct sense. It's kind of a 'gimmick' for the Pet Shop Boys.
But do you think there is also anything peculiarly British about the whole Pet Shop Boys' way of doing things?
Neil: There is a kind of caricature of Britishness that goes on . . . of British reserve. We kind of play up to it. (Chris challenges Neil with an inquiring stare and Neil voices Chris's unspoken question.) 'Do you Neil?' I think we do actually.
Chris: It's because we are British.
Neil: You sounded just like your mother when you said that.

Again, there are no taxis to be had late evening in Tokyo so we wander the streets. Neil returns to a familiar topic.
'. . . and I'll say, "Jason, leave Stock Aitken Waterman - we'll do your next album. It doesn't matter that you can't sing. Neither can 1! Who can? . . ."'
Chris complains that the hairdresser who trimmed his hair earlier arrived, despite express instructions, without clippers and so couldn't finish the job.
'Another complaint,' notes Neil.
'I don't want to come across as a whinger,' moans Chris.
'That's the title of Chris's complaint chapter,' Neil announces. "'I don't want to come across as a whinger".'
At the hotel there are more fans with more presents. In Japan you don't get given cuddly toys or cheap boxes of chocolates. The Japanese fans - the ones who hang around hotel foyers anyway - are rich and generous. And clever fans always get to know what pop stars like. Spandau Ballet, for instance, can rely upon their fans' generosity for a bottle of their favourite tipple, Jack Daniels. Likewise, the Japanese fans know the Pet Shop Boys' weakness for fine clothing. Tonight's offering comes, promisingly, in an Armani bag.
'I hope it's some briefs,' mutters Chris as he frantically unwraps the package. 'I'd like some briefs.'
'Shut up about underpants,' says Neil, who is politely thanking and kissing the fan while Chris paws away.
'It's swimming trunks!' exclaims Chris. 'And,' he adds, one presumes sarcastically, 'they're my size. Extra large!'
'You can always borrow a marrow,' says Tom.
'It's the best present from a fan we've ever had,' says Chris.
'Give her a kiss, for God's sake,' instructs Neil.
'I need more for a kiss,' Chris insists, but of course kisses her anyway. 'We just throw them away when we get upstairs,' he lies.
Janet is amazed. In the lift she says, 'You know how much that fan's spent?'
'They have pots of money,' says Neil matter-of-factly. 'She's staying in the hotel.'
'She's into matrimony,' surmises Chris.
Neil opens the letter that came with the present. 'I had one yesterday that said, "I love your secret smile".'
In his room Neil opens a bottle of champagne sent by Bros and phones London. He speaks to the head of Parlophone Records, Tony Wadsworth, and tells him that the tour is going 'extremely well, believe it or not. We're talking standing ovations.'
I ask if he's been using the keyboard at the other end of the room. He says he's been writing a song that they may possibly record with Dusty Springfield when they get back to London. 'It's called "She's In Love With The Man She Married". Another one that sounds as if it's from a musical,' he adds apologetically.
He mentions that he's annoyed at the bickering that has been going on. There has been fuss over rooming arrangements, particularly between two of the cast who are sharing a room. The rooms here are about Ł300 a night. But one of them gets up early, the other late. And one of them thinks the other smells.
'I thought that Americans liked sharing,' says Neil. 'They have pyjama parties.'
There is also unrest because Rob and Mark Farrow have been ordered to go home tomorrow by Tom and are both annoyed. Neil is upset because, having been invited out and paid for by the Pet Shop Boys, they are now going home convinced they are victims of an injustice.

The Simon Frith article in the tour programme mentions not only your Britishness but highlights a commonfactor between the two of you and Morrissey: you're all Northerners and you've all been attracted to London and the high life it represents but you are still able to look upon it as outsiders.
Neil: I don't know how true that is. (He thinks.) Actually I don't think of myself as a Londoner.
You both frequently refer with some pride to your Northern roots.
Neil: Yes.
Chris: It's definitely different. You can't pretend that England is one.
So do you take that outsider's viewpoint and use it in your songs?
Neil: Yes, I think it's true that we do. I've always felt an outsider. When I was at school I used to hate going to school and the reason was because I was an outsider. I was never one of the gang. Basically because I wasn't very good at football: that defined my feeling about school. It was a very sporty school and football is very important in the north-east.
You quite like being an outsider though, don't you?
Neil: I made a virtue of it, to be quite honest, because really I'd quite like to have been one of the gang. I think most people would. But you get so used to it you just make a virtue out of it. Then, by going to the youth theatre, I got to know other people who were outsiders at their schools and we had our own little group of outsiders and we all hung round together. I still know them. We used to skive off school together.
I also felt like an outsider when I went to college for the first two years. I always thought of students as being a bit dreary, and of course they were. Then, as I got older, I got more and more tolerant. At one time I wouldn't speak to people because of the way they looked. We were horrible snobs.
Chris: I think snobbishness isn't a bad quality.
Neil: No, I don't think it's a totally bad quality: it's an aspirational quality but in some ways it's a bad aspiration. There's a lot of pathetic snobbery.
Chris: A lot of people think of snobbishness as being rich people being snobby about poor people but the kind of snobbishness I prefer is your working-class, street-cred snobbishness.
Neil: Oh, well I'll tell you what I don't like: I don't really admire pride in class. I don't admire people who say, 'I'm working-class and proud of it.' And of course the middle class are never supposed to be proud of being middle-class. I know I'm middle-class . . .
Chris: They're the ones who usually pretend to be workingclass heroes. Was Joe Orton middle-class?
Neil: No, he was working-class. But I kind of think it's a fantasy, saying the working class are all terribly . . . I think it's like saying black people have got a fantastic sense of rhythm, to say working-class people are all . .
'In tune with life', maybe?
Neil: Yes, and sexier and more vigorous and earthier and less pretentious. Anyway, I think, as it says in 'Left To My Own Devices' - the 'if you want to belong. . .' bit - I've made a virtue out of being an outsider. I just developed a snooty attitude as a protection.
One could almost say that the Pet Shop Boys are the snooty outsiders of pop.
Neil: Oh, I think we are. My attitude to the rest of pop music is exactly the same as my attitude to other people at school. It's actually identical. In that they are quite nice if you get to know them but you wouldn't really want to. Because I just get the impression that they do things I don't do, and they make me feel a bit uncomfortable and I don't like to be confronted by them.
And are you scared that if you got to know them . . .?
Neil: . . . I might become one of them? Yes. I used to feel like that at school. They all used to drive to school when they were seventeen - well, a couple of them did anyway - and I always felt like a little worm in the foundation of it all. I didn't really want to be part of their thing. And I also used to look round and think, 'I'll be a star and you're not going to be.' That was my defence.
And youSeel in the same way that if you're very pally with the rest of pop music then you'll start appearing at Prince's Trust concerts?
Neil: Yes. Deep down I think we're morally superior to all of them, but I would never really say that.
You just did, I'm afraid.
Neil: Mmmmm. But actually (he looks over to Chris) you're the same.
Chris: I know (smiles). But I don't talk about it.

Chapter Seven

Wednesday, 5July

Rumours that the tour is to be extended have been rife over the last few days. It's going to Europe. It's going to the rest of South-East Asia. Thailand is certain. Australia is probable. The Iron Curtain is being investigated. Brazil is under negotiation.
This afternoon Ivan makes an announcement as everyonebut not Neil and Chris - gets on the tour bus. Neither Europe, nor Asia, nor Thailand, nor Australia, nor the Iron Curtain, nor Brazil are mentioned (nor will they ever be). But, if everyone is available and willing, New York (at Radio City Music Hall) and Los Angeles (at the Universal Amphitheatre) look likely, expanding the tour by nearly two more weeks. 'We can't ignore the biggest market in the world,' says Ivan, 'and the boys like the show so much . . .'
At the back of the coach sits Mark Farrow. The only flight today went via Anchorage in Alaska and took nineteen hours, landing in London in the midst of a London-side transport strike. Rob and he have decided to stay until tomorrow.
At the venue I find Neil and Chris unwrapping presents in the dressing-room. Chris uncovers a doll with a striped top and a hood - a Chris Lowe mannequin. 'It's you!' exclaims Pete. 'That's going back to England.'
Next is a large oil painting. It is not very good. In fact it is only really the fact that it has been delivered here that suggests that the two people represented are the Pet Shop Boys. Furthermore it seems to have been painted by someone who only had orange and purple paint at their disposal.
'It's horrible,' states Chris, unnecessarily. Nevertheless it is clearly a labour of love. 'Will it fit in the bin?' he asks.
'Alan!' shouts Neil to head of wardrobe. 'I want my make-up now! Pete! I want a cup of tea!'
Chris sniggers, amazed at this outburst. 'You just come in with orders. That's for your bossy chapter.'
Neil reports that it won't be as big as Chris's complaints chapter.
'I don't complain a lot,' protests Chris.
'You do,' says Neil in a manner that suggests the subject isn't open to further debate.
They go downstairs and do a surreal telephone interview live with Radio One's morning DJ Simon Bates. They are in Japan, Simon Bates is talking from a boat in the Pacific as part of a round-the-world trip and it is being transmitted in Britain and conversation is hampered by an echo on the line. Perhaps surprisingly, they like Simon Bates. 'I think he's funny,' explains Chris. Afterwards they say that the interview was boring: 'It's hard to be spontaneous with that delay.'
The show is a success and without incident, except that when Chris comes on-stage at the end there is no spotlight on him. He is furious.
I watch the encores with Tom Watkins. During 'It's Alright' he says he thinks they should project the video for the 'It's Alright' single: them and dozens of babies. I say I prefer it like it.
'Let's sell more product,' he implores.
The credits roll up at the end and Tom's name appears. He feigns a lack of interest.
'I only want the money. I don't want the recognition.'

Back-stage Chris is still furious about the lights.
'I'm going to bring my own light tomorrow, like Top Cat's standard lamp,' he grumps.
Someone comments on the ghastly oil painting of them, still not in the bin. Chris admits there are others.
'Where's that one of you as a woman, Neil?' he asks.
'It's us as a married couple,' Neil explains. It has conveniently disappeared. There are more: Japanese fans are keen to represent the two of them interacting in strange ways. They were once given one of Chris crying and Neil comforting him. Another depicted them kissing.
'That really turns them on,' laughs Neil.
'IsJase here?' asks Tom.
'I don't think he's making an appearance, rather tragically,' says Neil. The surfing has taken all day, we later discover, and he has a migraine. Maybe he'll come tomorrow night.
A gray-haired bloke and his wife, local EMI bigwigs, appear at the door. He congratulates Neil, who chats amiably. Mr Collins, for that is his name, tells Neil that when he came to Hong Kong three years ago audiences never even used to stand up. He says hello to Chris who grunts back a half-hearted welcome through a mouthful of toast.
The room fills up. Already in here are Neil, Chris, Mr and Mrs Collins, Lucy from EMI in Britain, Tom and his friend John, Janet Street-Porter, their British booking agent Pete Nash, Alan (working, tidying up clothes), Pete, Mike Lynch the tour accountant, Lawrence the photographer. Patrick is filming us all on Super-8.
Janet Street-Porter tells Neil that the audience is 'full' of middle-aged Japanese businessmen in suits, dancing. (I haven't seen any.) Excited by this, Neil asks her to film tomorrow night's show on Super-8; they can use the footage in the live video.

Neil: We deliberately made a decision early on, after we did an interview with the Sun, that we wouldn't talk to the tabloid press. We were persuaded to do it and we got that ridiculous 'Rudest Men In Rock' thing. To be fair to the Sun, David Hancock said, 'Don't worry, don't look so miserable, I'm not going to ask you about your sex life,' and he didn't. But anyway, we realized early on that there was no point us being involved in the tabloid press because we weren't going to run our lives as a totally public soap opera, which you have to do. We didn't think we'd be good value on those terms and also we didn't want that kind of press attention because we didn't think it was going to be helpful to us. In fact we have occasionally spoken to them. When 'It's A Sin' came out we did a piece with Linda Duff, who we knew anyway (she was one of Neil's contemporaries on Smash Hits) for the Daily Mirror, for the centre-spread, and we had copy approval. It's difficult to think of a good angle on the Pet Shop Boys. She did the 'Odd Couple' piece.
Then we did one with David Wigg for the Daily Express, but he did this not-very-good interview and he didn't run it at the time. But there's no point getting involved because people who work for tabloid newspapers genuinely have that attitude that all publicity is good for you.
The person who pioneered the tabloid approach to pop music was Adam Ant, who correctly credited a lot of his sueśss to the tabloids in that famous quote. (The quote was: 'The success of the Ants has been due to television, to the national press and to colour magazines like Smash Hits and Flexipop, and that represents, I think, a revolution in the music industry because we've been absolutely hated by the official music press...') And of course Duran Duran did a lot of that and Boy George was the extreme example.
Lots of groups have pictures of themselves arriving at Heathrow airport. Chris and I have never been pictured arriving at Heathrow airport, though we spend our lives arriving there. I don't think the photographers recognize us, to be quite honest. Maybe they have to be tipped off. I don't know. But we've never really operated as family household name personalities like Bros do. Bros's entire career has been a tabloid controversy: are they crap or not? Do you avoid it purely on career terms or because you don't want to bear the invasion of privacy?
Neil: It's on all terms. I don't like the intrusion of privacy that you would get as a result. We're never going to deliver the kind of thing they want in a million years.
What do you think they would want?
Neil: They want sex and romance. Interestingly David Bowie just did one. He obviously felt he needed tabloid support for his Tin Machine . . . 'project'. It said: "'My ex-wife is a bitch," says David.' I'm surprised he lowers himself. It did nothing for his record.
Chris: That's the other thing . . .
Neil: . . . it doesn't sell your records.
Itjust makes you 'famous', doesn't it?
Neil: It makes you famous, but in my opinion being famous makes you despised by a lot of people. I remember my mother's attitude towards someone on television would be 'D'y'know, it's pathetic really, isn't it? To have to flaunt themselves like that . . .' And I have the same kind of attitude, that it's pathetic for people to flaunt themselves across the pages of the press all the time, just because they've got a record to sell.
Do you worry that at your level of success there's a market for dishing-the-dirt stories about you?
Neil: Yes I do.
You've escaped to perhaps a surprising degree. Do you think you've been lucky, or is it the way you've handled the whole business?
Neil: To be honest, I don't think there's a lot of dirt on us.
It doesn't take much to make a story.
Chris: I'm glad they haven't. I couldn't stand it. I find it very unnerving to be exposed. Even if there's a small piece about us inJonathan King's page, I feel terribly exposed.
Neil: Ironically, because we were always accused at the start of being a hype, of being pop strategists and all the rest of it, I think we've done it totally on the quality of our records. I don't think we've given a lot of aid to it otherwise. I think there are few groups over the last ten years that have got as far as we've got without doing the tabloid business. I think we've proved you haven't got to do it.

Tonight, however, they have agreed to talk by telephone with Gill Pringle, the Daily Mirror's main pop writer.
Back-stage Tom suggests to Neil, halfjokingly, that perhaps Neil could tell Gill Pringle that Tom had persuaded them to do the interview. He wouldn't mind the kudos; Gill Pringle can -or at least he believes she can - be very important for his other acts.
Janet Street-Porter tells me about the time she attacked Gill Pringle with a handbag at a dinner in honour of Michael Jackson because Gill Pringle had suggested in the newspaper that Janet was having an affair with someone she worked with. 'I was on the A table and she was on the Z. Janet remembers. 'I hit her with my Chanel handbag. I said, "This is a Chanel handbag - that's the closest you'll ever get to class . . ."'
We all hoot.
'I could have sued her about the story,' she says. She adds that it wasn't the inaccuracy that hurt so much. 'He wasn't even attractive . . .'
They all consider what should be said in the interview. Neil says he'll say, 'Mr Udo says it's the best show he's ever seen. We only did three shows but we could have sold out twenty-five.'
'Are you talking to Gill?' Tom asks Chris.
'I don't talk to the press,' announces Chris.
'Don't you think we should do this Daily Mirror thing?' asks Neil with genuine concern.
'I want you to do it,' says Chris.
I ask Neil to tape his side of the interview and hand him my tape-recorder; in doing so I absent-mindedly call it not 'the Gill Pringle interview' but 'the Janet Street-Porter' interview. Janet hears this and, perhaps understandably, is offended by the implied comparison. She launches herself towards me and rains blows - fairly hard ones - on to me. 'I have a shit list, you know,' she scowls.
In the hotel elevator Chris asks me if I'm going to sit in on the interview. 'I don't think so,' I say, before Neil, who looks horrified at the suggestion, can say it for me. 'I am,' says Chris, 'I'm going for the laugh.'
They have agreed to do the interview because they have been promised a colour centre-spread: two pages. The piece eventually appears, after several delays, the following week. It is about one-third of a page in size and includes two colour photos. It may be interesting to compare the quotes given in the piece with what Neil actually said.

SPREE AT THE SHOP

Pets Splash Out On A Show To Remember

As the Pet Shop Boys' lavish stage show finally explodes in front of British fans, pop's top duo aim to outdazzle anybody you've ever seen on tour before.
'We've spent Ł300,000 making it unforgettable,' says the band's elusive Neil Tennant in an exclusive interview. 'Our show is far more elaborate than Michael Jackson's, George Michael's or any other recent tours.
'MichaelJackson's was dreadful in comparison. I couldn't even see him on the video screen, let alone make out the tiny dot on the stage.'

The relevant quotes, as actually spoken, are as follows.
Following a question about why they weren't making much money off the tour: 'Well, because we spent so much more.