Psychological

Neil: That started with something Chris wrote. Chris: I'd just set up a little keyboard in my flat, and just to see if it was working, I programmed some drums, programmed a bass and a top line... and then I thought it was quite good, so I took it into the studio to work on it. It was just a groove, really. Then Neil added a middle bit.
Neil: That was much later. I had the title "Psychological" written in my phone. I'd been reading this book about Oscar Wilde and I read - I was quite fascinated by this when I read it - that when the word "psychological" first started to be used, people used to use it to mean "gay". Homosexual. They'd say, "Oh, he's rather psychological?
Chris: Like the word "earnest".
Neil: When Chris played me what he'd written, I sang this psychological thing, and then I had this idea of just having a list of creepy images. It didn't
take that long to write. In the studio I've got a book by a writer from the thirties and forties, Walter Benjamin, which Dave Rimmer gave me, and "an undertaker with a bowler hat" came from that. It was one of the first songs we wrote for the album and we liked it, this very strange, minimal, funky groove. And then I thought that, as a pop song, it should sort of explain what it was about - I've realised that the middle sections of our songs either explain the song or give an opposite point of view. We had it in our manifesto for this album that we were going to write songs about what was going on in the world today, and the middle section is about the culture of fear, saying it's funny that people like to be scared by horror films, and do they like to be scared by threats of terrorism or bird flu or dirty bombs? And is there anything there to be frightened of? "Is it your imagination?" That's the point of the middle bit. Then the song goes into a bit that reminds me of "Vogue" by Madonna, this dancey widescreen bit. I think the message of the

song, and the beginning of the album, is: fear is in the mind, as much if not more than in the external world.
The Sodom and Gomorrah Show

Neil: This was a title I also already had. We went to Naples at the end of February, 2005, and we had a programmer called Luca Baldini, who's an Italian dance producer and DJ who lives in Berlin, and we decided we were going to do an update of the Patrick Cowley sound.
Chris: Is that right? We wrote it in Naples but I thought we did the Patrick Cowley bit in London, because we got Patrick Cowley's record in and worked out the scale. We spent ages to work that out.
Neil: I thought we did that in Naples. Anyway, the demo was terribly rough - all three songs we did in Naples were very, very rough.
Chris: It wasn't four-on-the-floor when we wrote it. Neil: We were having a very frustrating time and then we suddenly came up with a really good chord change. The studio was owned by these Italian guys called Planet Funk and they said, "Hey! Great chord change! Great tune!" We weren't sure about it, so it was quite encouraging. It could have had an "It's a sin" sort of feel, but when we were working on it with Trevor Horn we wanted to get away from that. We spent ages working on it - this and "Luna Park" are the tracks we spent the most time on. We gave Trevor a copy of the remix of The Killers' "Mr Brightside", the Thin White Duke mix by Stuart Price, because that's sort of four-on-the-floor but rocky, and he took that on board. Trevor changed the chords in the first two verses, and then it goes back to the original chord change. Chris: There were too many chords.
Neil: It was too musical.
Chris: It was chord overload. He simplified it. Neil: And we got Anne Dudley to do strings on it, and she arranged that brass at the beginning. Chris: Neil said that he wanted a classic Trevor Horn moment in it.
Neil: Trevor said, "Oh, you mean you want a gag?" I said, "Yes, I want a gag".
Chris: He calls them gags.
Neil: I said, "I want a gag on every track:' Chris: That's that "sun sex sin..." bit. Neil: We wanted a boys' church choir singing it, and Trevor had a school that was going to do it, and then they saw the lyrics. I said, "There's nothing
wrong with the lyrics - it comes out of The Bible!" Anyway, they didn't do it so we got singers in to do it. And I put that breathy vocal part on as well... Chris: Dollar.
Neil: Yes, because I wanted it to sound like Dollar. I was trying to do the greatest hits of Trevor Horn. And the speaking - that was a gag too.

Chris: We tried to visualise where the song existed. Neil: So it starts in the desert - you hear the wind in the desert - and you're approaching the club... Chris: ... and the door opens and you hear a blast of the band playing inside the club.
Neil: And then we got this guy, Fred Applegate, who was in The Producers. He was a really nice guy. He came in and we got him to say a few things and then Trevor edited that together. So we got a great intro out of it. And the piece of music at the start, the brass thing, was from a tape someone gave me which I made with some friends in 1979 and it had me playing a sort of honky-tonk thing on the piano. It took a long time, this track.
Chris: It's quite an epic track.

Neil: I had the title first and I wasn't sure what it meant, but I knew it was something about the modern world. I got the bit from the Bible from the Internet - I googled "Sodom and Gomorrah" - and so there are references to the Bible. "Took it with a pinch of salt" is a reference to Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt escaping from Sodom. And "I never dared to venture out to cities of the plain" - Sodom and Gomorrah were cities of the plain, and I'm sure you don't need telling that "Cities Of The Plain" was of course the name of two volumes in A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu by Proust. I quite like that there's a pretentious reference in line four. I've read half of the first book of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu - it was boring. Anyway, when we brought the song back to London, I kept thinking: what does this song mean? I couldn't work out what it meant. And then I realised that The Sodom and Gomorrah show was the world as it is on the television, with everything exaggerated. Sexed up. Only the bad bits. The ways news is presented as a kind of exciting show. I came to the middle - "there was a place down below lit was there I realised / the meaning of the show" - and I thought, "That's a really good line". But I couldn't think what the meaning of the show was. It took me months to work that out. And then I realised the meaning of the show was obviously love. "You've got to love to learn to live where angels fear to tread" - I think that's quite a good line. In the song, the narrator is the same person as

in "I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing", the reserved, quiet person who doesn't really live in the world and thinks that falling in love is something other people do. In this song he started participating in the world. He realises that the only way the world won't be destroyed - and we live in a world that is presented as endlessly on the brink of destruction through, truthfully or not truthfully, a dirty bomb or climate change or Asian bird flu or secondary smoking; any Daily Mail cover any day of the week - is through love because only through love will we respect each other, and live together, and not destroy the world. It's not enough to avoid the world, you've got to participate in it. And by participating in it you will find the love that will enable you to survive or live some kind of fulfilling life. Trevor Horn said he thought it was about a guy going out to New York clubs and coming out. And in a way it is also about a guy who never goes clubbing. And someone else said to me last week that it was about a guy who survives the Aids crisis. Who knows? It can be whatever you want it to be. Bob Dylan doesn't have to explain his lyrics like this, does he?

I made my excuses and left

Chris: We'd been to see A Minute Too Late by Simon McBurney - I keep thinking it was the opening night of The History Boys but apparently I'm wrong - and I left the party afterwards and decided to walk home. It was raining slightly and I just started singing, "I'm all alone again, I'm all alone". I don't know why. It just kept going round and round in my head. And I remembered that my phone had a record capability so I sang that into it. I was just off the Strand. And then we Bluetoothed it to the computer the next day and did an arrangement around it. At the time I thought it would just be a funny little interlude between two songs.

Neil: We were thinking about the album having like links - they call them skits in rap records, don't they?
Chris: But Neil then said he had some lyrics, so for the second time - the first time being "You choose"
- Neil presented me with completed lyrics and I wrote music to them.
Neil: I think I was finishing the lyrics in the studio in London. They were sort of inspired by reading, in the first autobiography by John Lennon's first wife, Cynthia, called A Twist Of Lennon, the story

of her coming back from holiday in Greece and coming into their house in Surrey and she opens the living room door, and Yoko and John are sitting on the sofa. She says, "Do you want to come out for dinner?" and John just looks at her and says, "No:' And she walks out of the house and she realises her marriage has broken up. When I read her account of this in her latest autobiography I was quite impressed by how accurate the song is to her retelling of it - I only read it recently after we finished the album. But I always remembered that story - it seemed so sad. The song is not totally meant to be Cynthia Lennon but it takes that, and then at the end of the song it goes back into the original melody and goes up to a coda where the woman is looking back and thinking that what she thought was just the end of her life was the beginning of a new life. Another perennial Pet Shop Boys theme. Another strong woman strides through our album.

Minimal

Neil: The idea for "Minimal" came when we went to holiday in Ibiza the year before last, the day after Battleship Potemkin in Trafalgar Square. Chris had some Italian friends there and they liked minimal house music, and they kept saying "minimal" in this Italian accent. I put "minimal" in my phone as the title of a song, and then when we started writing songs in our studio last year Chris was playing something and I just thought "in-i- n-i-m-a-l... minimal". Chris phoned up an Italian friend and said, "After four, say 'minimal' - so we could record it - and he went "uno, due, tre, quattro which was so perfect so we used that as well. He was in some coffee bar and finally he said "minimal" in this slightly annoyed voice - I think he thought Chris was taking the piss out of him -and he had a girl with him and she said "minimal" too, so we used both voices in the chorus. The words of the song are simply about minimalism. There is nothing more going on. I think the middle bit's really lovely: "an empty box, an open space, a single thought leaves a trace". It makes me think of Grapefruit by Yoko Ono. There's something very beautiful about a plain white piece of paper with one word written on it: "yes". When we played Trevor and his wife the demos, he liked this immediately, but then, being Trevor, he made it rather maximal at the end. There's a sort of discord at one point which is really great, and there are

marimbas right at the end - the first time marimbas have appeared on a Pet Shop Boys record. There's the minimalist composer Steve Reich who often uses marimbas.
Chris: Steve Reich in the afternoon... Neil: This was nearly the first single, but we wanted something with a bit more attitude.

Numb

Neil: It seems quite nice that "Minimal" is followed by "Numb", one of the biggest orchestral-sounding tracks we've ever done. We originally recorded it in 2003 for PopArt. It was Chris's suggestion that we got Diane Warren to write a song for us because we had to write a hit. She gave us three songs - one of the others was called "Kisses On The Wind" which keeps getting mentioned in interviews. She sent me a text message about it saying, "'Kisses On The Wind' still hasn't been recorded... and yes, my best friend is a parrot."' We liked "Numb", which she was honest enough to tell us had been turned down by Aerosmith because they were doing a blues album. We decided to keep it for this album, and I think it really works here. If there's a theme of the album being a reaction to the contemporary world, in "Numb" the person singing it wants to turn off the TV. And it's true - sometimes you see events unfolding on the news and you don't know what to think and you just wish they weren't there really. It was all finished in 2003 but we did a slight remix last year at the same time as I changed one line. Diane Warren is American, and I'm singing "I wanna be numb" which is quite surprising - I did try singing "I want to be numb" but it just sounded stupid. But I did change "don't want to hear the news, what's going down...". "Going down... is so American, so I changed it to "...what's going on".

God willing

Neil: Chris had the idea that we should have the introduction to the album, and he wrote the chord change. On auto tune, which is a programme on which you can tune voices or change the sound of them, I've always been interested by the fact that they've got different scales, so rather than just the normal western scale they've got ones with quarter tones. They've got an Arabic one, and I've always wanted to put my voice through it, so I was doing
my version of the kind of call to prayer you hear when you're in Muslim countries, and I sang about ten tracks of that. It ended up reminding me a bit of David Bowie on Low or something like that. Then we put them all through this programme. I don't know if it does sound Arabic in the end but that was the idea. I called it "God willing" because that's the translation of "Inshallah" which is what a Muslim will say - "I'm going to the shops, God willing, Inshallah". I quite like that it suggests that you don't take anything for granted. We spent a long time working on this track - originally it was twice as long. We put it at the beginning, but it didn't work there. Now, on the vinyl version of the album, it's the start of side two, and I think it has that effect on the CD as well. After the incredible down-ness at the end of "Numb" it kick-starts the whole thing, and then it cross-fades into "Luna Park".

Luna Park

Neil: This was originally written in 2003 when Chris and I were writing songs for PopArt. We wrote a lot of songs at the time - "Casanova in Hell" is on the album, but there's also a song called "Baby" which we gave to Alcazar. Unfortunately they broke up before they recorded it, which was a shame. There's another called "Blue on blue". The idea for the lyric of "Luna Park" came from being on holiday in Nice and seeing the Luna Park funfair. There's also one in Moscow, and I think in the film The Third Man the funfair is a Luna Park. I've always liked the phrase "luna park". The demo was half this length.
Chris: For a while it became a big rock track. Neil: It was the point in making the album where we said to Trevor, "We must remember: the Pet Shop Boys is an electronic duo".
Chris: With orchestra.
Neil: We're going to release that mix at some point, the one where I said, "I don't know why we don't get Axl Rose in to sing this' because it's just big, like "November Rain" by Guns 'N' Roses. Chris: There was a big vocal thing at the end, like Dark Side Of The Moon.
Neil: This backing singer called Lucinda vibed out. Chris: This is the song Trevor thinks sounds like Pink Floyd anyway, doesn't he?
Neil: Yeah - I've genuinely never listened to much Pink Floyd of their main success period. It's quite rock because it's based around percussive piano. A lot of it was written by me on the piano but it didn't

have a chorus and Chris wrote the chorus. Chris: The reason it sounds like a fairground ride is because I thought it could sound like "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds".
Neil: I went for a run and when I came back Chris had done the whole arrangement of it. It's sort of psychedelic. Trevor loved that. I think the song's about America. Luna Park is America. A lot of the words were inspired by the Michael Moore film Bowling For Columbine - originally I had a line about killer bees in it. Like "Psychological", it's the fact that people find being scared exciting. Also, as ever, I'm also fascinated by lives lived at night. Luna Park's a night thing; it's still open during the day but what interests me is the fact that during the day it's still technically night there - it's still all about ghost trains and lights and the thrill of night, even during the day. That's why "it's always dark in Luna Park".

I'm with Stupid

Neil: This was the first song we wrote when we started writing songs in our studio last year. The song title came from the t-shirt. Chris wrote the music. I thought it sounded like Michael Jackson -"Smooth Criminal", maybe, or "Bad". It was all written quite quickly.
Chris: Yeah.
Neil: I thought, "I'm with Stupid... oh, Blair and Bush". It's sort of a satire: Blair thinking Bush is the stupid one. The pivotal moment in the song is where it says, "Is stupid really stupid, or a different kind of smart?" I love that the website Popjustice now says "Popjustice - a different kind of smart". The song's funny, but it does have an element of seriousness about it. I think it's a much better political song than George Michael's one, "Shoot The Dog". It's amazing when you think about it, and look at the political times we've been through in the last ten years - has anyone written a good political song?

Casanova in Hell

Neil: Also written in 2003. It's about Casanova.
Chris: In Hell.
Neil: The idea of Casanova in Hell is Casanova not being able to have sex - that's his idea of Hell. I read a couple of books about Casanova that inspired it. It's one of those things where you're
proud to put something that's not normally in a pop song, i.e. the word "erection". The word "masturbate" was in originally but I took it out because I thought it was too much. It was Picasso's idea of "hell is having to masturbate" - it said "his aging fate to masturbate, Casanova in Hell". But when we were recording, it was during the Michael Jackson trial period and there was so much talk about masturbating it put me right off. I thought it was a bit creepy. But it's one of my favourite tracks on the record.
Chris: It has a big Las Vegas ending. Neil: Chris wrote the music in my house in the North on the piano. I changed the melody though because the melody was actually slightly more schmaltzy.
Chris: Schmaltzy! That's a great word.

Twentieth Century

Neil: The last track written for the album. The demo was programmed by Chris rather than by Pete Gleadall. I'd had the idea for the lyric for ages:
"sometimes the solution is worse than the problem". I was thinking of communism - that as a solution to the problems of the world, the problems weren't as bad as the solutions. It's attacking that very Twentieth Century idea that one big idea can solve everything. I think thehistory of the Twentieth Century proves conclusively that one big idea is not going to solve everything, that human activity is too complicated and detailed for one thing to solve everything, and applying that kind of idea simply leads to mass slaughter.
Chris: The end's very good.
Neil: I love the electro groove it's got. This is the track where we went back to the minimal electro vibe that was the idea right at the beginning. It's not actually that different from the demo, apart from the fact that we put the acoustic guitar middle bit in. I notice a lot of people think it's the weakest track on the album, and I totally disagree with them. Chris: I think it's the weakest track on the album. Neil: I think it's very unusual.
Chris: Yes, it's unusual-sounding.

Indefinite leave to remain

Neil: The other song on the album that we wrote
in Naples. I was reading a book about Bach meeting Frederick the Great, the Prussian king who was a hero of the Enlightenment. He was a

sort of philosopher king. And in one chapter it mentioned a Bach chord change so I read it out to Chris who played it, then he changed it slightly. That's why it's got a slightly hymnal chord change. I'd had the title "Indefinite leave to remain" because a Sri Lankan friend of ours~ his passport had been at the Home Office for years, and he finally got it back stamped "indefinite leave to remain"~ which was a great moment for him because his status in the country had been rather precarious. I thought it was a rather beautiful phrase~ and one of our ideas for the album was to write the songs based on contemporary events and there has been all this debate about asylum. So I thought of writing a love song where the language of it is almost like someone applying for residency to stay in the country; a boy or whatever wants his girl to live with him and is saying she's like a country. I like it - it's a passionate idea delivered in a very dispassionate way.
Chris: Interestingly, the time signature doubles up in the middle bit, which you get twice. Neil: It originally had words as well, that bit. Chris: It worked much better without words. We almost took out the whole part and then I thought, "actually, you could just keep the music and not have the words".
Neil: It was something like "Visas, and passports, may keep us, apart...".
Chris: It was very Broadway musical. Sometimes it's nice to have a bit of space. Neil: It's nice, because I like the fact that it starts off with the brass band and then it goes incredibly synth. It reminds me a bit of that American group The Postal Service. We suggested the brass band.
Chris: To me, it sets it in a northern town like Bradford or somewhere like that, where you've got brass bands but you've also a large Asian population, so you've got that contrast between the two cultures.
Neil: It's a classic Pet Shop Boys bit of a
tearjerker. It's very sincere. We always thought the song would be near the end of the album if not the last track.

Integral

Neil: We started writing it in our studio in London but Chris didn't like it.
Chris: I kept going "Is it crap? Is it crap?"
Neil: If Chris thinks it's crap, it normally means it's really catchy, by the way, readers. I said, "No, it's great:'
Chris: I was, "Is it total crap?"
Neil: I don't even know where the idea came from. Chris: Wasn't ID cards one of the things on our manifesto?
Neil: Yes, it was. Authoritarianism. I'd already had the idea of "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear". Because that's what they keep saying, isn't it? It sounded like a song from a show, and I thought it was great that we'd got a four-on-the-floor stomper which we haven't done a lot of recently. It's always quite nice to have. Trevor liked it as well.
Chris: I played it to a friend and that helped me change my mind. And then lots of other people said how much they liked it. I'm very easily swayed. Sometimes, when something comes easily, you tend to not value it. The three bits to the song just came really easily.
Neil: The idea is that it's sung from the point of view of the authoritarian New Labour-style government. "If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear" is always used as a justification for ID cards. What we object to about ID cards is that they're intelligent cards with a data strip that can link to a central database containing personal information which may be shared with America; when you say you don't want that, they always say that if you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide. But I think we all have a right to privacy. I feel it's a move that suggests we have to justify ourselves to the state before the state will trust us, and I think it's for us to trust the state and not the other way round. I think the government has to win our trust, not us win their trust. We put the lyrics on the website earlier this year when there was a fuss brewing about ID cards, and Chris had phoned me up to say that some junior minister had used the word "integral" in defending it. There was a big article in the Evening Standard about the song. But the song has got a wicked kind of humour as well. It's meant to be' someone giving a speech really, madly justifying all of this, with a lot of energy behind.
Chris: It's quite authoritarian, the music. Neil: Yes, it's quite Stalinist, I think, and the music really reflects that. It's really catchy, though.
Chris: It's a great way to end the album. It's in the "Go West" spot.

May 7,2006. Studio One, BBC Maida Vale
studios, London. It is the day before the Pet Shop Boys will play a live concert with the 60-piece BBC Concert Orchestra, and this morning they are rehearsing with the orchestra for the first time. (The last two days they have been rehearsing with just the band - a remarkable line-up itself, led by Trevor Horn who is playing bass, and including famed Oscar-winning arranger and composer Anne Dudley on piano, noted producer Steve Lipson on guitar and 10 CC and Godley & Creme's Lol Creme as one of the backing vocalist.)
Neil and Chris arrived here at 10.30 on this Sunday morning, and when Literally arrives nearly an hour later they are working on "Casanova in Hell". More specifically, Chris is swinging round in his chair between the keyboards while Neil is singing along to Anne Dudley's piano, as the orchestra builds behind them. Neil won't even be singing this song in the concert - Rufus Wainwright, one of the guests, will be doing so - but right now he is helping everyone understand the arrangement. They move through "After all" and "Integral", then the conductor, Nick Ingman, says, "Neil, we have to have a break:' Orchestras operate under very strict union rules - each session is three hours long with a fixed break in the middle.
"I love all this union stuff ," says Chris. "Bring back the unions - that's what I say."
Neil wanders over and says that he saw their performance on Popworld yesterday, recorded days earlier, in a tone of voice which confirms that it was fine without saying so.

"You know I'm missing the last game at Highbury to be here," says Chris. Chris is a long-term Arsenal fan and season ticket holder, and today they play their final match at the stadium, against Wigan. They need an unlikely series of results today - beating Wigan while Tottenham lose to West Ham - for them to qualify for next year's Champions League.
"You've made the ultimate sacrifice," says Neil, perhaps without the necessary sincerity.

"I have made the ultimate sacrifice," says Chris.
After a few minutes, the orchestra efficiently re-take their seats. During "Luna Park", the percussionist hits the metal sheet used to simulate the sound of thunder. It will be at an appropriate volume during the concert, when everything else is louder, but today it sounds comically loud. At the piano, Anne Dudley gets the giggles. The song still sounds good, though, and at its end Marcus, the BBC soundman, mutters what a wonderful track it is.
Neil sings "Jealousy" - another song he won't be singing tomorrow - and stands there during the final, long orchestral blow-out.
"Hilarious," he says, as it finishes. They rehearse the final two songs -"Indefinite leave to remain" and "West End girls" - and Neil worries that the gap between the two of them is too large. He wants the sound effects at the beginning of "West End girls" -the ambient city noise and the echo of footsteps in the street - to fade in over the end of the previous song. He talks to the conductor and Pete Gleadall and they agree to re-edit the backing track to make this possible. They have finished the rehearsal a little early for lunch, and so they decide to run through that transition. Chris, meanwhile, sits at the keyboard reading Heat magazine. He studies the merchandise from the new Take That tour, proclaiming most of it "crap" though he is somewhat taken by the boxer shorts, some of which say It Only Takes A Minute, others How Deep Is Your Love.
"Lunchtime," finally comes the
announcement. It is 1.21.
"We've finished early$' says Chris. (Nine minutes early, in fact.)
Neil and Chris have been advised to race for the front of the queue at the BBC cafeteria so that they're not caught behind the orchestra, so this they do. There's still a short wait, during which Chris sings to himself a song about chilli con carne. Over lunch they discuss some practical matters to do with tomorrow night's concert. Should their guests, for instance, come back onstage and take a bow at the end?
"I imagine Rufus will already be having dinner at J Sheeky," predicts Neil.
As they eat, another guest, the actress and star of Closer to Heaven, Frances Barber,
amves.
"I'm so frightened..? she says, in a way which manages to seem both sincere and rather actress-y. "But what a wonderful thing for you guys. Everyone wants tickets:'
"I was scared," Neil says, "but it's not that
scary here. I've never sung live with an
orchestra before... well, not very much:'
She mentions that she recently did an interview for the Channel 4 documentary, and that after half an hour - during which she felt she was delivering what was needed rather well
- they told her there was something wrong with the camera and they wanted her to start again.
Neil nods, and says that they have long had a rule about that kind of thing. "We quite often say," he says, "'we only say things once':'
A man who was sitting near the entrance when we came in walks over to say hello. He turns out to be the novelist and scriptwriter Hanif Kureishi, and the man he has left at his table is the composer Michael Nyman, who soon also comes over and offers his hand. (The two of them are working together on a piece in one of the nearby studios.)
"We've never met," he says to Neil and Chris, and starts talking to Neil about his work with Damon Albarn on Damon's contribution to Twentieth Century Blues, the album of Noel Coward songs Neil put together some years back. (Neil struggles to remember the details.) When he goes, Frances Barber says how justifiably annoyed he has always been that he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for his score for the movie The Piano.
Neil asks Frances Barber whether she will help them out with another part of tomorrow's show, speaking the introduction to "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".
She nods, looking relieved. "No, speaking I
can do," she says.
"We could do it on computer," Neil says,
"but I thought you could do it in your Nurse
Ratchett voice:' "Absolutely," she says. "That's easy:' She wants to check one detail herself. "I should just dress as me? Not as Billie?"
Sunday, Maida Vale, with Sally Bradshaw.
ISunday, Maida Vale, Rufus Wainwright with Neil.
Sunday, Maida Vak, Frances Barber rehearsing.
star of Closer to Heaven, Frances Barber, amves.
"I'm so frightened..:' she says, in a way which manages to seem both sincere and rather actress-y. "But what a wonderful thing for you guys. Everyone wants tickets:'
"I was scared," Neil says, "but it's not that scary here. I've never sung live with an orchestra before... well, not very much:'
She mentions that she recently did an interview for the Channel 4 documentary, and that after half an hour - during which she felt she was delivering what was needed rather well
- they told her there was something wrong with the camera and they wanted her to start again.
Neil nods, and says that they have long had rule about that kind of thing. "We quite often say," he says, "'we only say things once':'
A man who was sitting near the entrance when we came in walks over to say hello. He turns out to be the novelist and scriptwriter Hanif Kureishi, and the man he has left at his table is the composer Michael Nyman, who soon also comes over and offers his hand. (The two of them are working together on a piece in one of the nearby studios.)
"We've never met," he says to Neil and Chris, and starts talking to Neil about his work with Damon Albarn on Damon's contribution to Twentieth Century Blues, the album of Noel Coward songs Neil put together some years back. (Neil struggles to remember the details.) When he goes, Frances Barber says how justifiably annoyed he has always been that he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for his score for the movie The Piano.
Neil asks Frances Barber whether she will help them out with another part of tomorrow's show, speaking the introduction to "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".
She nods, looking relieved. "No, speaking I can do," she says.
"We could do it on computer," Neil says, "but I thought you could do it in your Nurse Ratchett voice:'
"Absolutely," she says. "That's easy:'
She wants to check one detail herself.
"I should just dress as me? Not as Billie?"

"No," says Neil. "No," echoes Chris. "As you' says Neil.
"What are you wearing?" she asks.
"Just a tailcoat," says Neil.
"Just a tailcoat," repeats Frances Barber, laughing.
"I'm doing the look of the album," he explains.
"The whole thing's intimidating for me," she says.
"It's intimidating for me," says Neil, "but as it gets closer I get less intimidated. I'll probably get more intimidated again tomorrow:'

She goes off to run through "Friendly fire" with Anne Dudley before the orchestra go back into the studio. Chris mentions seeing The Beautiful South's Paul Heaton on Andrew Marr's political interview programme on TV with Gordon Brown. They've been asked to do political programmes recently, but they've turned them all down.
When the orchestra do return, Frances Barber sings "Friendly fire" with them, a little tentatively, but captivating nonetheless.
"Great," encourages Neil.
She speaks with one of the soundmen about using headphones and the potential problems. "My ears are tiny," she explains.
At just before three in the afternoon, Rufus Wainwright arrives. (He has flown in from America just for this concert.)
"Hello, sweetie," he says, as he enters, in Neil's general direction. "Have you guys started?"
"Nearly finished," says Chris. "Have you prepared?"
"I know the song," he says.
Neil studies the "Casanova in Hell" lyric that has been printed out for him and notices a mistake. "Her sharp perception" has been typed, when it should read "her sharp suggestion". He draws Rufus's attention to the error, and corrects it himself by hand.
"I'm not promising a perfect first job," says Rufus, taking his place on a stool. The music begins. "I just have to be cued as when to start, that's all:'
He messes up a couple of moments, but sounds wonderful. He does it again, and then Neil walks over.
"In the end section you could rock out a bit," says Neil.
"Walk out?" wonders Rufus, mishearing.
"Rock out," says Neil.

"Oh. Rock out. OK..." he says. Under his breath, he repeats this advice to himself. "Rock out," he murmurs.
He does it again.
"Excellent," says Neil. "It sounds lovely:' He turns to Rufus's friends who are sitting near the doorway. "It sounds like he wrote it," Neil says.
Chris goes over and chats with Sister Bliss from Faithless, who has dropped in from one of the other studios where she is working on a 15-minute symphonic piece. (It seems that this is probably the same piece Michael Nyman and Hanif Kureishi are doing.)
The "I'm with Stupid" seven-inch picture discs arrive - the first time Neil and Chris see the finished article. Chris laughs at how black the vinyl is. "Why has no one else thought of doing this?" he says. He studies it some more:
the picture disc, the sleeve, the inner sleeve. "I love our picture disc. It's over-packaged:'
"It's the eighties again," says Neil. "It's literally a waste of wood' says Chris. Rufus surveys the musical mix in front of
him. "You've got every medium," he tells Neil, then thinks of something that may be missing. "You need a rapper:'
"No," Neil corrects him, "I'm the rapper:'
They start a final complete run-through for the day, but it breaks down during the first song, "Left to my own devices". When they finally get through it, Trevor Horn looks at Neil and wipes some imaginary sweat from his brow. Meanwhile, the musicians in the orchestra are complaining about the sound from the PA coming back at them, distracting them. The soundman tells them that they need to get used to it, as tomorrow it will only be worse.
As Neil begins to sing "Rent" in the arrangement Angelo Badalamenti did for Liza Minnelli's Results album, Chris wonders whether he has time to pop over to Sister Bliss's

studio. During this performance, he doesn't stay onstage during the songs where he has nothing to play. "There's no miming going on," he points out. (He sensibly decides that there isn't time to leave and return.)
When they reach "Casanova in Hell"~ Rufus trips over a few parts. Neil suggests he might want to run through it some more with Anne Dudley but he says not - that when he returns tomorrow he'll have it - and takes his leave.
"I'm going to start singing it like Rufus now," Neil tells Chris.
"He should have sung it on the album," says Chris.
Neil nods. "He should be lead vocalist. It'd be best for all concerned:'
Chris gets a football score update as they play - Arsenal will not be in the Champions League as things stand.
They do "It's alright", but it falls apart because no one gives Sally Bradshaw, the opera singer who sings on this and "Left to my own devices", her cue. The second time round, Neil gets the words wrong and sings the "generations will come and go..." verse twice, but they carry on anyway.
"It's one of those round-and-round chord changes," he says at the end.
As they're nearly finished, Chris gets another football update - incredibly, Arsenal are now winning and Tottenham losing. When the sessions breaks up at 4.56 - over half an hour early - it is confirmed, and Chris quietly celebrates. Neil picks up the lyric sheet Rufus has left behind - his homework. Neil is seeing him for dinner and will give it back to him then.

May 8,2096. The Mermaid Theatre. The Pet Shop Boys prepare for their final run-through onstage. Already there is a little fuss. Chris is unhappy about the two transparent Radio 2 logos which have been dangled in the middle of the stage above their heads and wants them removed. Neil isn't so bothered. "It gives it an event feel," he suggests. He's more worried about how low the stage is ~- just a few inches high - which he seems to find unsettling, and

how cold it is in here. People are still setting things up. In front of where the Pet Shop Boys will be, monitors are being wrapped in black cloth, and people shout out, in urgent voices, phrases like, "Flutes, Marcus!"
Neil talks to Frances Barber about where she could stand to the side, behind the curtain. She nods, but looks a little deflated. It turns out that they are at cross purposes - Neil is working out how she will do her spoken part on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" but she is imagining that this is for her main performance.
"No, not for 'Friendly fire' ," he exclaims. "That'd be ridiculous:'
She looks relieved.
Robbie Williams - tonight's other guest performer - walks in with his friend Jonathan Wilkes and takes a seat in the front row to watch the first part of the run-through. He grins when Neil speak-sings the line "Che Guevera to a disco beat". At the end of the song Neil says, once more, Hilarious," then adds, "at this point I'll explain the orchestra, say what we're doing tonight, and then I'll say what this is?
Robbie is asked whether he wants some "Jealousy" lyrics to prepare himself.
"I've got some," he says, taking them, "but it's always good to have two:'
Neil and Chris have been bumping into Robbie since he was in Take That, and have got to know him somewhat better recently, and they wrote a song together a few months ago: a studio date arranged after Chris bumped into him at Soho House. They asked him to sing "Jealousy" because he's mentioned several times publicly that it is his favourite Pet Shop Boys song.

They do "Rent", "You only tell me you love me when you're drunk" ("Good song," notes Robbie when it starts) and "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show", and then Neil explains how he will introduce Rufus. After "Casanova in Hell", a screen comes down - very slowly - so that the appropriate Odessa steps section of Battleship Potemkin can be projected as they perform "After all". Chris sits in the audience. "I like watching this," he says. ("This'll come out well on the radio," murmurs Jonathan Wilkes.) On its way up the screen sticks. "Carry On at the
Kremlin," says Robbie, who is asked whether he wants to stand for his song. "No," he says. "If at all possible:' (He will.)

After the final two songs of the first half -"Friendly fire" and "Integral" - Neil suggests that they break and rehearse Robbie singing "Jealousy". He steps onto the stage and shakes hands with Lol Creme and Trevor Horn. He sings with his eyes shut until the beginning of the second verse when he has to check the lyric sheet, then misses the quick beginning of the third verse coming out of the first chorus, then misses his cue to come back in after the instrumental break. But what he sings sounds very good indeed.
"You don't think you should come on later," wonders Chris once he has finished. There is quite a long instrumental introduction when he will just be standing there.
"Do you think you should come on during the instrumental," suggests Neil.
"I think I should send my trainers on first," says Robbie.
Neil suggests that they run through it again. This time Robbie makes a later entry, raising his hand to acknowledge an audience that isn't yet here, buttons up his coat and launches in with more gusto than before. He still makes some mistakes, of course.

"Excellent," says Neil.
"I'll get it right tonight," he promises.
"That sounds brilliant, mate," says Jonathan Wilkes.
"Thanks," says Robbie.
"Like Stars In Their Eyes," says Jonathan Wilkes.
The musicians take a Musicians' Union break, which Chris once more applauds.
Robbie chats with Neil. "Have you been doing a lot of promo?" he asks.
"We've been doing too much," says Neil.
Trevor Horn comes over.
"What a great pleasure it is to meet you," says Robbie earnestly, and talks about how much he likes Fundamental. "My favourite is 'Numb'," he says.
Lol Creme joins them. Robbie asks if they've met before - they haven't - and they discuss

their places of origin. "Prestwick?" says Robbie. "The train stops there:' Neil tells Lol: "A lot of people are coming because they've heard you're singing. If they shout 'Wall Street Shuffle'~just ignore them..."
After the break, they run through the second half of the show, which begins with "Numb".
"I will then say the arrangement for that," Neil announces, "and then the next song, which is a bit more cheerful?
It's "It's alright". Then comes "Luna Park" and - "at this point I will say something about Dusty Springfield" - "Nothing has been proved", during which Neil messes up his entrances into the verses and Robbie leaves his seat to take his place at the side of the stage (followed, as ever, by his security man).
Neil now introduces "Jealousy" without reference to Robbie, and stays on stage to speak the Shakespearean introduction over the opening music, then says, "Will you please welcome a very special guest tonight, Robbie Williams?"
"Merci... beaucoup," he says then looks a bit flustered and silently mouths the words "lyrics?" until he finds them, just in time. At the end, he unbuttons his coat and spins round, clenches his fist, and heads over to chat with Chris. He shakes both Pet Shop Boys' hands, says "See you later on," and heads off, as though to leave, though he stays by the door to watch a little of "Dreaming of the Queen" first.

After "It's a sin"~ the final song before the slightly artificial encores - artificial because though the Pet Shop Boys can leave the stage the orchestra cannot - the vocalists work on their "Amen" harmonies. Sally Bradshaw asks Chris what the lighting will be like tonight so that she can be prepared.
"I've asked to be in complete darkness," he says. "I imagine you're going to be lit:'
"How am I going to know about that?" she quite reasonably asks, and he directs her to the lighting man.
Chris fingers the Chris Lowe Chord Charts And Parts document on his music stand.
"What's to stop a member of the public running onstage and putting these in the wrong order?" he worries, though it seems an
improbable threat.
Andy, the tour manager, walks over. "Are you happy?" he asks Chris, perhaps foolishly.
"Happy?" repeats Chris, incredulous. "Tolerably OK?
In an upstairs room there is a buffet dinner featuring what Neil declares to be some of the finest sausages he has ever eaten. As they eat, Sally Bradshaw asks Neil how one might go about singing someone else's song. She will be performing a series of songs about love at Cambridge Folk Festival and she would like to include "Casanova in Hell". He says that she doesn't need permission - she should just go ahead.
"You could do the original lyric," says Trevor Horn. (It used to be "his aging fate to masturbate...", rather than .... .to contemplate".)
Neil thinks this is a fine idea. "You have to put 'masturbate' back in," he says. "You have to:' He sings it.
"I'd be happy to," she says.
"I just couldn't cope with it," he explains.
Conversation turns to sausages. Steve Lipson says he also knows where to get some excellent ones near his home in the countryside, and it turns out Sally Bradshaw knows one of the places he mentions, and they start mentioning places like Chipping Norton and Stow-on-theWold in the Cotswolds.
"This is a very P G Wodehouse

conversation," Neil observes.
Trevor Horn points out that he has just been reading a Wodehouse compendium.
"My favourites," says Neil, "are the Blandings Castle ones:'
He speaks in favour of the Ralph Richardson TV version in the sixties, and Sally Bradshaw defends the Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie incarnation, which prompts Trevor Horn to muse on Hugh Laurie's sexiness, and a general appreciation of his accent and limp in the current American TV drama House.
"My favourite Wodehouse," says Trevor, "is The Clicking Of Cuthbert?
"Is that an American one?" asks Neil.
"No," says Trevor, "it's a golfing one:'
"Oh, I don't read the golfing ones," says Neil.

This, it turns out, is the kind of conversation that takes places before an orchestral Pet Shop Boys concert.
"Do you know how old Orson Welles was when he wrote and directed and staffed in Citizen Kane?" asks Steven Lipson (who, amongst many other things, is the man responsible for S Club 7's finest moment, "Don't Stop Movin"'.)
"23," says Lol Creme, authoritatively.
Steven Lipson nods.
"He was on a roll then," says Neil.
Back in the dressing room, the Pet Shop Boys stylist, Frank, gives them a good-luck present: a copy each of Infernal's "From Paris To Berlin".
"I think we should do a cheesy album," says Chris. "I'm fed up with quality
"I know what you mean," says Neil. "It doesn't come naturally to us, quality:' He considers whether this might be a little harsh. "Well, it does and it doesn't:'
He looks at the good luck flowers from Gary Barlow and reads a letter from a fan detailing all the Pet Shop Boys concerts she has attended.
"Chris," he asks, "what jeans are those?"
"Those are Prada," says Chris. "They're my jeans for the season. Frank brings me a new pair every time he sees me. They cost about 250 quid. Four pairs are a thousand:'

"Whereas," says Neil, "four Dior pairs cost only £600:'
By now, they are each lying on one of the two couches which are lined up end to end so that they could be squeezed into such a thin dressing room.
"This'd be what it's like doing a Wednesday matinee and an evening performance," comments Neil.
Chris tells Neil about the Take That underwear merchandise.
"We should do a range of underwear," Chris suggests. "'NUMB':'
"'BEING BORING," suggests Neil. "'THE SODOM AND GOMORRAH SHOW:'
"'LOVE COMES QUICKLY' ," says Chris. "All our songs work as underwear.
"'HOW CAN YOU EXPECT TO BE
TAKEN SERIOUSLY?"' says Neil. Chris picks up a box of chocolates they have
been sent. "I hope they're Fair Trade," he scowls, and reads the side of the box. "They contain nuts," he notes, as though this is a minor outrage.
"Well," Neil sighs, "It's finally the night. I've been dreading this concert for three months:' Radio 2 approached them to do this concert towards the end of last year. At first they planned to perform with nothing but an orchestra, then they changed their mind and decided to use more traditional Pet Shop Boys instrumentation augmented by an orchestra. ("I just imagined everyone being disappointed," says Neil.) They also realised that this fitted in better with the style of Fundamental, on which most of the songs are electronic but with an orchestra. So they made a list of all of the Pet Shop Boys songs they most liked, old and new, which had been recorded with an orchestra, and decided to add orchestration to two more which have never before had it: "West End girls" and "It's a sin". Even so, Neil has been somewhat dreading it. "Now it's here," he says, "weirdly, I'm almost enjoying it:'
Tony Wadsworth, EMI's managing director, pops by to see them, and they talk about the Channel 4 documentary.
"I don't hate us by the end of it," says Chris, "which is what normally happens:'
"I thought, 'I might quite like to buy their album' ," Neil agrees.
Tony Wadsworth talks about how well things are going, and how good the reviews are. "It's all 'return to form' ," he says.
"I always hate 'return to form' ," says Neil. "Q said it, and they gave our last three albums four stars:'
They begin to prepare. Neil puts in his contact lenses.
"It starts very early, doesn't it?" says Chris. They are due onstage at 7.30.
"Good thing is," says Neil, "it finishes early:' He continues what he is doing. "You're so lucky not to wear contact lenses:'
"You don't have to wear them," says Chris. "You could wear glasses, or have laser surgery, or...
Dave Dorrell tells them that Stuart Maconie

from Radio 2, who will be introducing them, will be coming up to say hello at 7.15.
"7.17 now," reschedules Neil, "because we're running a bit behind:'
With difficulty, Neil frees a new toothbrush from its clear plastic packaging, and runs the tap in the dressing-room basin.
"Oooh," Chris exclaims, "you're going to wash your teeth with water from that tap?"
"No," Neil says, "you're right:' He reaches for a bottle of Evian instead, and brushes.
"You don't want a stray piece of rocket on your teeth," says Chris. "In The Sun. Or in Heat magazine:'
"No, that'd be typical:' says Neil. He sings to himself the chorus of one of the new songs Rufus Wainwright played him last night from his forthcoming album.
Chris says he might just wear the hoodie he's got on.
"It is radio:' he points out. "I wonder if I'll be able to see the music with sunglasses on:'
"In that case:' says Neil, "I'm doing my own make-up. It's 'model's own':' He begins to do so in the mirror. "I feel very backstage doing my own make-up:' he says. "It's showbusiness, darling. It's a wonderful life:' He finishes. "See? I just saved Parlophone eight hundred pounds:'
Chris decides he'd rather keep his blue jeans on than change into the white ones he has ready. "Somebody's got to keep it a bit street:' he says. "I've even got dirty trainers:'
At 7.17 Stuart Maconie comes in. He asks whether there's anything he should say while introducing them.
"Say whatever you like:' says Neil.
"But don't be sarcy:' says Chris.
They have their photograph taken with him and he leaves.
"It's the waiting I don't like:' says Chris. "I wonder what it feels like when you're waiting for the death penalty. And they say, 'You've got five minutes."'
"I bet it's terrible:' says Neil.
"I wonder if you think, 'Oh, I didn't think it was going to happen':' says Chris. "Or, 'It's about time - I've been here for 25 years."'
Neil leaves the dressing room then returns to
fetch his lyrics. He asks whether he should wear his top hat and is met with a chorus of "yes"s. Chris checks himself in the mirror. "Oh, you scruff:' he says, and strides into the corridor. "The thing is, you've got to have a bit of contrast. We're not a rock band:' He feels in his pocket as they go down the backstage stairs. "Oh, my phone!" he exclaims.
"You haven't got your phone, have you?" says Neil.
"I'll have to put it on vibrate:' says Chris.
"No!" says Neil. "I can hear it in my headphones..."

Stuart Maconie introduces tonight's
performers as "some of the finest musicians ever collected together on a British stage", listing many of them until he finally builds up to "the Pet Shop Boys!" At which point they don't come on and Maconie has to explain to the audience -"because that's the lie that radio tells" - that he now has to leave the stage, and then the Pet Shop Boys own build-up to their performance will begin. Though it's a strange, small auditorium, and the house lights stay up during "Left to my own devices", it's immediately clear that this is going to work. As soon as the rhythm track comes in everyone is clapping, the orchestra sounds wonderful, Neil's voice rings clearly through and you get a sense that people are aware that this may be the only time in their life that they hear this - the full, long album version of "Left to my own devices" with all its lyrics and different movements and wild instrumental flourishes and Sally Bradshaw's operatic wails.
The top hat lasts until after the third song when Neil chucks in into the wings - "it's getting a bit sweaty under there". Rufus Wainwright's performance is greeted rapturously
- he kisses Neil before departing - and then Neil must talk at great length as the screen slowly lowers. (Towards the end, it starts to rise before the song and film have finished, then pauses until it is really time.)
"You don't get that in Take That's concert:' Neil points out, and introduces Frances Barber.

Unlike in rehearsals, she now falls back into all of Billie Trix's over-the-top jaded Teutonic mannerisms and hand gestures. Then after "Integral" - there is applause when Neil explains how it is inspired by the Pet Shop Boys' opposition to ID cards - it's the intermission.
"I'm quite enjoying it' says Neil in the dressing room.
"It's the best repartee you've done," Chris tells him.
"I feel like a chat show host," says Neil.
"You're the new Bruce Forsyth," says Chris.
"I had to restrain myself to stop asking Rufus about his Judy Garland project," says Neil.
There is a knock on the door. It is Janet Street-Porter and Elton John.
"The orchestra's great, but you can't hear the rhythm section," says Elton, then adds, as though maybe he has realised this sounds a little blunt (never mind not the only reasonable view on how the music has been sounding), "it's going to sound great on the radio? He adds: "I loved 'Rent' - 'Rent' is fantastic:'
"It's a lovely arrangement," Neil agrees.
"It's a great song," says Elton. "And Rufus did a great job:'
"'Integral' ," says Janet, "is your Rammstein:'
"Did you write it for them?" Elton asks.
"No," says Neil, "but when we were recording it, we kept telling Trevor it should sound like Rammstein:'
"You're not doing 'Stupid'?" asks Elton.
"No," says Neil. "There's not an orchestra on it:'
"And you're not doing my favourite, 'I made my excuses and left' ' he says.
"I don't know why we're not doing it," says Neil.
"Can you believe the England squad?" Elton asks, and he chats with Chris about the various merits of various footballers.
"It's hot in here, isn't it?" says Chris.
"It was hot out there," says Janet. "And then there was the smell of burning:' There was indeed a weird electrical-burning smell in the auditorium as the show started.
"It's great you've come down," Neil says to Elton.
"Come on, I was looking forward to it," he says. "It's the first time I've been out, apart from the other night:' They were both at a charity event the other night where Elton sung, and they laugh about a rather poor portrait of the Queen they saw there. Neil says that while he was there he fell into conversation with a man he knew was famous but who he couldn't identify - for a while he wondered whether it was the conductor Daniel Barenboim, but he hung on in the conversation without letting on that he didn't know until he realised he was talking to the playwright Tom Stoppard.
Elton asks about the Newcastle performance of Battleship Potemkin.
"God, it was cold," says Neil. "We had thermal underwear on. The sheet music was held onto the music stands by clothes pegs.
"I'm very impressed you've got Lol Creme onstage," says Elton.
Neil says that he nearly sung an extremely rude word in the lyrics to "You only tell me you love me when you're drunk" tonight by accident.
"It's not a rhyme," objects Chris. "It's not even a half-rhyme:'
Elton raves about Sally Bradshaw. Or, as he puts it, "The fabulous woman in the first song. I immediately said, I want one of her just to have around. She's so camp."
"She was doing Parsifal last week' says Neil. "She's a really famous opera singer. She normally wears sandals and a cotton dress - we told her she had to look like an opera singer:'
There is a knock on the door.
"It'll be 'five minutes' ' says Elton, in a how-many-millions-of-times-have-I-heard-that-knock tone of voice.
"Five minutes!" comes the shout through the door, and they all roar with laughter. Elton and Janet make their way back to their seats, and the Pet Shop Boys prepare for the second half.
"I'll sleep well tonight," Neil notes.
"Numb" slides into "It's alright", after which Neil says, "That's an old rave classic." Most of the audience laugh - it's probably funny to hear something described as "a rave classic" when it's played in a theatre like this

with an opera singer and an orchestra. "Well, it is," says Neil. Later, introduces "Nothing has been proved". "This song actually tells the whole story of the Profumo affair in four minutes. So actually you don't need to see the film."
He introduces "Jealousy" by explaining it as the first song they ever wrote. Robbie is greeted by a huge roar, and holds up his arms like a body builder, and grins. He makes a slight blunder or two on his way through the song, but covers it up well, and by the end of the song half the crowd are on their feet for the first time. He hugs Neil, gives a quick thumbs up, and is gone. (When Literally speaks to him a little later, he is full of beans about the experience.)
"It's just slightly over-the-top, the end of that song," says Neil.
When they return for the encores, Neil introduces "Indefinite leave to remain" by noting that "the start sounds a bit like the Hovis advert". After "West End girls", they are gone.
"I'm glad that's over anyway' says Chris in the dressing room, as ever the last person on earth to acknowledge a triumph. He runs the tap in the basin. "This is useless," he fumes. "I've seen it all now."
Rufus comes in.
"Yes, Rufus' says Neil, "you stole the show."
"Yes' says Rufus. "But then I gave it back."
There is a party in an upstairs bar. Neil is approached by Trevor Horn's wife and manager, Jill Sinclair.
"Rufus and Robbie did wonderful impersonations of you," she says.
"The end of 'Jealousy' is so camp I thought I was going to laugh," he says, and pays tribute to her husband. "I love watching Trevor play," he says. "It's like I love watching Chris play -because they're concentrating so hard."
Soon he disappears back into the thick of the party, where their friends and family are waiting. One side of the room is lined with the neon signs spelling out the names of the songs on Fundamental and they won't be switched off anytime soon.

DIARY
Though some of the songs that appeared on
Fundamental were written back in 2003 (and one of them, "Numb", was recorded in its near-final version back then), most of the writing and recording took place during 2005. As usual, Literally has Neil's full diary of its sometimes meandering progress as it took place.

January 17th, 2005.
Beginning work in the Pet Shop Boys'London studio with Pete Gleadall. Wrote basis of a new song called "I'm with stupid".

January 18th.
Worked on "For every moment".
Neil: We wrote this song in 2003 and we've written three versions of it. We ended up giving it to Alcazar, though they've now split up. We were always revising it, never happy with it. We wrote "Luna Park" and "Casanova in Hell" at the same time.

January 19th.
Worked on "Unbelievable scenes
Neil: This was based on an old demo from 1998. Back then we wrote it thinking of it being for Robbie Williams, because even at that point there had been murmurings of us working with him. Anyway, we turned it into a new song which became "Fugitive".

January 20th.
Continued with "Fugitive" and started to write new song, "Psychological

January 21st.
Continued working on "Psychological". Gwyneth Paltrow came into the studio. Neil: Our studio is in the same building as Sam Taylor-Wood's studio. Gwyneth Paltrow came to be photographed and Sam invited us upstairs to have lunch with her.

January 24th.
Started writing new song, "Ring road".

January 25th.
Finished "Ring road".

Neil: It'll probably be a b-side. It's a sort of rock song, really.

January 26th.
Started writing a new song, "The performance of my life".

January 27th.
Finished "The performance of my life". In the evening, went to see A Minute Too Late, Simon McBurney's Complicite show.
Neil: There was a drinks party afterwards, and then Chris walked across Waterloo Bridge.

January 28th.
Started writing a new song, "I made my excuses and left", linked to a song Chris sung on his mobile last night.

January 31st.
Neil at home with flu - lay in bed and wrote lyrics for "The performance of my life" and "I'm with stupid". Chris in Paris for the Dior Homme show.
Neil: He phoned me up at one point from the Georges V and Kate Moss came on the phone and sang "Careless Whisper" to me.

February 1st.
Still had flu - more lyrics for "I'm with stupid" and lyrics for "I made my excuses and left".

February 7th.
Back in London studio. Added middle eight to "Psychological".

February 8th.
Vocals on "I'm with stupid".

February 9th.
Worked on a song called "One way street".
Turned an idea of Chris's into "Girls don't cry
Neil: "One way street" was later turned down by
Bananarama.
Chris: Not that they'll ever hear the end of that.

February 10th.
Finished demo of "Girls don't cry". Made it
more electronic-sounding. Vocals on "Fugitive".

February 11th.
Finished vocals on "Fugitive" and worked on "One way street".

February 14th.
Worked more on "One way street" then wrote most of a new song, "Integral". Chris went home to get records because he was DJ-ing.

February 15th.
Worked on "Integral" then put a vocal on "I made my excuses and left".

February 16th.
Worked on "I made my excuses and left", making the track more electronic-sounding and writing a new section. Put vocals on "The performance of my life

February 17th.
Went to the NME awards to present the Godlike
Genius award to New Order

February 18th.
Finished "The performance of my life

February 23rd.
Made changes to "Integral", "I made my excuses and left" and "One way street" then wrote a new song, The Resurrectionist
Neil: That's one of the songs where I gave Chris the lyric and he wrote the tune.

February 28.
Flew to Naples.

March 2nd.
Went into the studio in Naples and meet Luca Baldini. All our gear has arrived. Started working on a new song, "Dirty tricks

March 3rd.
Worked on "Dirty tricks
Neil: We worked very slowly here.

March 4th.
Worked on "Dirty tricks".

March 7th.
Started working on a new song, "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show ". Wrote chorus lyrics then came back from lunch and sang them.

March 8th.
Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
Wrote the verse lyrics and sang them.

March 9th.
While Luca worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show ", changed some lyrics. Then started a new song called "Indefinite leave to remain

March 10th.
Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain ". A lot of sitting around. Then finished the words and sung vocals.

March 11th.
Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain
Neil: It was fun actually being in Naples.

March 14th.
Finished off "Indefinite leave to remain" - edited the middle bit and changed the bass and drums. Decided that was the end of working with Luca. Neil: That night we met Sondre Lerche - saw his concert at the Theatro Nuevo, and had dinner with him beforehand. Then we took the rest of the week off, went to Pompeii.

March 19th.
Flew back to London from Naples.

April 4th.
Back in our studio. Breakfast with our manager and discussed maybe Trevor Horn producing the new album. Started writing a new song called "Minimal".

April 5th.
Worked on "Minimal"; finished words and put on the vocals. Went to the ballet.
April 6th.
Finished "Minimal" and started reworking "The
Sodom and Gomorrah Show

April 7th.
Did seven-inch edit of "No time for tears" with
Pete Gleadall then carried on working on "The
Sodom and Gomorrah Show ". Went to the
National Film Theatre where we bumped into
Will Young.
Neil: We were discussing at one point releasing
"No time for tears" as a single.

April 8th.
Put vocals on "The Sodom and Gomorrah
Show".

April 11th.
Put vocals on "One way street".

April 12th.
Put new vocals on "The Resurrectionist", then Chris reprogrammed "Indefinite leave to remain" and I re-sang the vocals.
Neil: You changed the rhythm track, didn't you? Chris: Yes, it was fast, originally. We slowed it down.

April 13th.
Changed the lyrics to "The Sodom and
Gomorrah Show" and re-sang them.

April 14th.
Did a demo of a song for Sondre Lerche, "Dancing In The Dusk". Went to see Rufus Wainwright in concert.
Neil: Sondre Lerche asked us to take this song he'd written on acoustic guitar and make a demo of it so it sounded like Heetwood Mac, so we paused the whole writing of the album to do this. It's quite good, actually.

April 18th.
Wrote a new song called "China
Neil: Afterwards, rather appropriately, we went in a taxi to Mr Chow's where we had dinner with Gary Barlow.

April 19th.
Started writing a new song, "After the event".

April 20th.
Worked on "After the event"."

April 21st.
Finished writing "After the event" then went to a charity preview of the musical Billy Elliot.

April 22nd.
Worked on "After the event".

April 25th.
Started writing a new song called "The former enfant terrible

April 26th.
Finished "The former enfant terrible

April 27th.
Lunch with our ex-manager Jill.

April 28th.
Worked on a new song called "Twentieth
Century

April 29th.
Worked on "Twentieth Century

May 4th.
Put vocals on "Twentieth Century" then started to rework "After the event". Neil: "After the event" is one of those songs we keep changing. It's sort of good and sort of not-good.

May 5th. General election. After voting, we worked on "After the event".

May 6th.
Chatted to Trevor Horn about the album.

May 7th.
Went to see Kylie Minogue in her Showgirl concert at Earl's Court.
May 9th.
Start working with Trevor Horn at Sarm West on tracks for the new album. I went to see a performance of Shostakovitch 's Seventh Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall.
Neil: At this point we obviously think we've got enough songs.

May 11th.
Worked on "Luna Park" with Trevor Horn. Sang new backing vocal idea.

May 12th.
Worked on "Luna Park".

May 13th.
Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show"
with a drummer called Cliff Hewitt.
Chris: He'd played with Apollo 440.
Neil: Some of it is still there on the track.

May 17th.
At Pete Gleadall 's studio, recorded chorus vocals on the track "Throw" by Dan Fresh then went to Sarm where we worked on "Luna Park".

May 18th.
Worked on "Integral" with Trevor Horn.

May 19th.
Worked on "Integral" and started work on "Casanova in Hell ". Corrected and re-sang lyrics in "Casanova in Hell" and "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".

May 20th.
Worked with Trevor and Dave Clayton on the
overture for the album.
Neil: That bit was never used.

May 23rd.
Met with our manager about the Battleship
Potemkin release and decided to release "No
time for tears" as a single. Played Wolfgang
Tillmans some tracks from the album.

May 24th.
Met Yoko Ono at her hotel in London and dis

cussed performing with her at the Meltdown festival, then went to Sarm. Tessa Niles came in and sang backing vocals on "I'm with stupid". Worked with the programmer Dave Clayton on the introduction to the album, "The day before yesterday

May 25th.
Edited "Men and maggots" from the Potemkin soundtrack at Pete Gleadall 's studio for the album release. Went to Sarm where Trevor was working on "Integral". When we left Trevor was doing bass on "Luna Park".
Neil: We actually listened to all of the Battleship Potemkin tracks to decide what we'd edit down, then decided not to edit anything apart from that.

May 27th.
Tim Weidner, the engineer started to do a seven-inch mix of "No time for tears

May 31st.
Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
Tim finished his mix of "No time for tears" and
we adjusted it slightly.

June 1st.
Went to Metropolis to master "No time for tears" and remaster the Battleship Potemkin album. In the evening, we went to the ballet to see Swan Lake.

June 2nd.
Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show

June 3rd.
Recording "some Arabic flamenco nonsense vocals" for "The day before tomorrow", then we went to see Guys And Dolls with Ewan McGregor in it.

June 6th.
Worked on album introduction with Trevor and
Dave Clayton.

June 7th.
Worked on "Luna Park". Put backing vocals on
it. After dinner worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show

June 8th.
In Pete Gleadall 's studio worked on our mix of "Walking On Thin Ice" for Yoko Ono's Meltdown Show then went to Sarm. Tessa Niles did backing vocals on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show

June 9th.
In Sarm.

June 10th.
In Sarm.

June 13th.
I presented the BP Portrait Prize at the National
Portrait Gallery.

June 14th.
Worked on "Luna Park", putting back Chris's
original bassline. I played acoustic guitar on it.
After dinner, worked on "The Sodom and
Gomorrah Show "focussing on the bass.

June 15th.
An orchestral session at Angel studios, Islington,
for "Integral" "Luna Park" and "Casanova in
Hell".
Neil: As covered in Literally.

June 16th.
At Sarm, Trevor had Phil Palmer playing acoustic guitars on "Luna Park". Went to Music Bank and rehearsed with Yoko Ono.
Neil: As also reported in the last issue of Literally.

June 17th.
Decided to not go into the studio and let Trevor
Horn get on with it.

June 20th.
Sang harmonies on "Casanova in Hell

June 21st.
Put new parts on "The Sodom and Gomorrah
Show".

June 22nd.
Chatted to Trevor about producing more tracks. Then we decided to take a break and let Trevor vibe out on the tracks.
Neil: This is where we decided to make the whole album with Trevor.

June 28th.
Fred Applegate, an American actor who's in The Producers, came in and did the spoken introduction to "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show ". Then we went to a rehearsal for Live 8.

June 29th.
Live 8 rehearsal.

June 30th.
Flew to Moscow.

July 1st.
Meeting with promoter Walked around Moscow.
Neil: We were going to rehearse there, but we
didn't in the end.

July 2nd.
Performed at the Live 8 concert in Red Square.

July 3rd.
Flew from Moscow to Paris.

July 5th.
Dior Homme show. Jason Shears there with David Furnish. Hedi Slimane's birthday party, which Pete Docherty was at. We saw The Paddingtons play and ended up chatting to them in their tour bus.

July 6th.
Back to London.

July 7th.
Woke up to the news that there'd been blasts on the tube.

July 12th.
Worked on "Minimal" and listened through "Psychological ", then worked on "Indefinite leave to remain
July 13th.
Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain

July 14th.
Press day for Battleship Potemkin, then went to
see The Paddingtons play in a pub at King's
Cross.

July 15th.
Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain"; sang two new vocal parts.

July 18th.
Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain" then started to work on "Twentieth Century"; sung some new vocals on it.

July 19th.
A new keyboard player Pete Murray, came in and played on "Indefinite leave to remain" and "Twentieth Century

July 20th.
A harp player and singer Lucinda Barry, played harp on "Minimal", "Luna Park", "The Sodam and Gomorrah Show" and "Casanova in Hell and then sang ad-libs at the end of "Luna Park ". Pete Murray worked more on "Twentieth Century

July 21st.
Failed bombings on the tube. Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain" and re-sang some vocals. Pete Murray played keyboards on the end of "Psychological".

July 22nd.
Worked on "Indefinite leave to remain ". In the evening saw the play Telstar, by Nick Moran, about Joe Meek.

July 26th.
German interview for Battleship Potemkin at EML Phil Palmer played acoustic guitar on various tracks.

July 27th.
Worked on "Minimal". Trevor got Phil Palmer

to play guitar on it, and sped up the track. Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" making the new rock feel work better Meeting about the Newcastle Potemkin concert next May A drummer called Virgil Howe came in and played on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".

July 28th.
Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show
Neil: Then we went on holiday for all of August.

August 31st.
Went to Frankfurt for the start of the Battleship
Potemkin tour in Germany.

September 6th.
Flew from Hamburg to London.

September 8th.
Back in Sarm West. Worked on "Psychological" and edited the end. Two musicians arrived from Los Angeles - Earl Harvin, who played drums, and Jamie Muhoberac, who played keyboards. Neil: They were there for two weeks, pretty much, playing on tracks on the album. They've played a lot on Seal's records but they also play with Air as well, and, I think, Beck.

September 9th.
Talked to Trevor about producing "I made my excuses and left". Jamie played on "Psychological" and "Luna Park". Earl and Trevor played on "Luna Park" and "I made my excuses and left".
Neil: Until this point we'd thought that "I made my excuses and left" would be produced by Ryuichi Sakamoto, but he never seemed to quite come through.

September 12th.
Jamie played on "I'm with stupid" and
"Indefinite leave to remain
Neil: We had two studios on the go by this point.

September 13th.
Jamie played on "Twentieth Century" all day
while we worked on "Integral". Earl Harvin put
Simmons drums on "Indefinite leave to remain
September 14th.
Earl played marimbas on "Minimal" and put
Simmons drums on it. Jamie worked on
"Integral" on keyboard sounds.

September 15th.
Technical stuff being done. Jamie finished work on "Integral". Meeting with Nick Ingman about string arrangements for "I made my excuses and left" and "Psychological". Earl played vibes on "Psychological".
Neil: The vibes are still very noticeable in the choruses.

September 16th.
A lot of sitting around. I sang "sun, sex, sin, death and destruction" 40 times for choir backing vocals in a falsetto voice.
Neil: Guess what that was like.

September 20th.
I went with Trevor to Anne Dudley's house and discussed orchestral arrangements of "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" and "Indefinite leave to remain

September 21st.
In Sarm. Not much happening.

September 22nd.
Robbie Williams phoned. Listened through to Nick Ingman 's orchestral demos of "Psychological" and "Minimal".
Neil: Nowadays when people do a string arrangement, they play them on a keyboard so you can hear them.

September 23rd.
Talked to Nick Ingman about orchestral arrangements.

September 26th.
In Sarm. Not much happening.
Neil: In the evening I did watch the Bob Dylan
documentary, No Direction Home.

September 27th.
Recorded orchestra at Angel studios for "I made

my excuses and left", "Minimal", "Introduction" and "Psychological Neil: The instrumental that would end up being called "God willing", and which was "The day before yesterday"~ is now called "Introduction".

September 28th.
Worked on "Twentieth Century", simplifying the middle bit.
Neil: That's where we made it just all acoustic guitars. Stripped it down.

September 29th.
Worked more on "Twentieth Century

October 4th.
Chris's birthday party.

October 5th.
Put item on website.
Neil: I had been told at Chris's birthday party about the two teenage boys who were executed for being gay in Iran - I put an item about it on our website and phoned up Pete Tatchell about it. Fundamental is dedicated to them: Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni.

October 6th.
Recorded strings at Angel studios for "The
Sodom and Gomorrah Show" and "Indefinite
leave to remain" with Anne Dudley conducting.
Recorded brass parts on both songs.

October 7th.
Mixing. Work on mix of "Luna Park" and add more spoken vocals to the end of "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show". Changed the beginning of "Indefinite leave to remain" to just brass.

October 10th.
Tim mixing "Luna Park"~ Rob Orton mixing "Minimal ". In the evening, went to see a concert by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Alva Noto.
Neil: We met Ryuichi Sakamoto at the aftershow party and he said he was sorry he hadn't been able to do "I made my excuses and left" but he'd been doing this tour.
October 11th.
Tim mixing "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show". Meeting with manager Played him "Luna Park".
Neil: When we played it, we thought the mix wasn't right. You could tell he wasn't knocked out by it.

October 12th.
Interview with Radio One about John Peel. Mixing.
Neil: Chris and I have to hang around the studio when they're mixing. That day we got bored so we went to see Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist which we didn't think was that good.
Chris: Disappointing.

October 13th.
Rob finished the mix of "Minimal". In the
evening we went to see a play called Flanders
Mare, starring Keith Allen.

October 14th.
Mixing. In the evening, we went to see a new
production of Hair.
Neil: Which we didn't like.

October 17th.
Rob mixing "Indefinite leave to remain ". Tim still working on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show ". We worked more on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" with Trevo, putting a high string line and other stuff on it. Went to the Turner Prize preview. After we went, Trevor sang some new harmonies on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show".

October 18th.
Meeting about touring with our agents and managers. Worked on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" mix with Tim. I copied Trevor's new harmonies and took his voice out.

October 19th.
Worked more on "Luna Park".
Neil: This is when we decided to strip it down
and make it more electronic. We had a day in
Trevor's little back room, working on that.

October 25th.
We went to Diane Arbus exhibit at the V&A and then went to Sarm. Another engineei Taz Mattar did a mix of "Luna Park" which we made some changes to.

October 26th.
Taz still mixing "Luna Park"; we made further changes. Rob mixing "I'm with stupid".

October 27th.
Rob finished "I'm with stupid" and started "Twentieth Century ". Taz finished "Luna Park". Neil: That mix, in the end, wasn't used, although it was quite a good mix.

October 28th.
Taz working on "Psychological" mix - two
young girls come in to sing on it.
Neil: One still sings on the end of the track.

October 31st.
Went to our studio and wrote a song with Robbie
Williams.

November 1st.
Back to Sarm. Tim mixing "I made my excuses and left". Rob finished "Twentieth Century". We adjusted the mix slightly and made some suggestions to make the "I made my excuses and left" mix more climactic at the end.

November 2nd.
Had a flu jab. Worked in our studio on the
demo of the track we'd done with Robbie
Williams.

November 3rd.
Rob mixing "Psychological", Tim mixing "Casanova in Hell". We worked with Trevor on "God willing ", now the title of the introduction. I suggested an album running order In the evening, we had a drink with Bananarama.

November 4th.
Listening through to my running order with
Trevo, then we all changed it. Suggested
changes in mixes.
November 7th.
Tim remixing "Casanova in Hell" - we went
back to the original demo drums in the verses.
More vocals on "God willing

November 8th.
Tim finished mix of "Casanova in Hell". Chris heard "God willing" vocals and we decided to dump them.
Neil: This was a sort of spoken thing on "God willing". We decided that it was pretentious, although Trevor actually quite liked it.

November 9th.
Went to the National Army Museum for the launch of a book, Last Post. We were in the same room as the only surviving veterans of World War I. Afterwards, went to Sarm and listened to new mix of "Integral" and "God willing", which Trevor had put the spoken vocals back on. Neil: Two of the people at the book launch were 105 and 109 years old.

November 10th.
Coffee with Sam Taylor-Wood and Patrick Cox re the stag night for Elton and David. Rob finishing the final mix of "Luna Park" and started new mix of "Integral", making it more electronic. Worked more on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show"; changed the introduction with a heartbeat.
Neil: We had a great faff - we walked up to the Electric restaurant on Portobello Road to record the ambience for the start of "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" because we had the idea that we wanted you to walk into the club and hear it. I don't think we used it in the end.

November 11th.
Worked more on "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show" and "Integral".
Neil: We recorded me walking on Basing Street into Sarm at the beginning of "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show". That is still there - that click is the door of Sarm West.

November 12th.
Went to Manchester to see Little Britain.

November 14th.
Worked more on "God willing ". Both Chris and I spoke the lyrics, then rejected them. Sang the second line of "Numb" again to make it sound more English. Had a playback of the whole album in Studio 2 - Chris, Trevor and I - and decided what we wanted to change.

November 15th.
Meeting about the stag night. In the evening went to Koko in Camden to see Madonna launch her album. After we went to the Groucho club with Bernard Sumner Neil: Bernard, mysteriously, was at the launch. He had a slightly better ticket than us.

November 23rd.
Playback of the album for our management
and various friends, including Dainton, Pete
Gleadall, Janet Street-Porter and Mark
Farrow.

November 25th.
Parlophone have a playback of the album at the Electric on Portobello road.
Neil: The album now is officially finished. Nothing else musical is going to happen on
it.

November 30th.
Start work on a remix of "Sorry" by
Madonna at our own studio.
Neil: We do that for the next three days.

December 5th.
Meeting at EM!. Turner Prize dinner

December 6th.
Remixing "Sorry" at Sarm West with Goetz Botzenhardt engineering while Trevor did a seven-inch mix of "Minimal".
Neil: "Sorry" took three days at Sarm. The mix of "Minimal" didn't work out.

December 11th.
Went to Paris.
December 13th.
Meeting with Dave Dorrell and EM! France and played them tracks from the album. Train to Cologne.

December 14th.
Played tracks to the German EM! staff then
flew back from Dusseldoif Told by phone that
Madonna loves our remix.

December 15th.
Meeting at Radio 2 about doing a concert with
the BBC Concert Orchestra in 2006. Lynne
Easton 's funeral.

December 18th.
Rehearsal for stag night.

December 19th.
Stag night.

December 21st.
Elton John's and David Furnish's partnership party.

December 22nd.
To Sarm West for a seven-inch edit of "The
Sodom and Gomorrah Show
Neil: Then it was Christmas.

Only minor adjustments were made in 2006. At the end of 2005, the album's running order was set as follows - "God willing", "Minimal", "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show", "I'm with Stupid", "Psychological", "I made my excuses and left". "Integral", "Numb"~ "Luna Park"~ "Casanova in Hell"~ "Twentieth Century" and "Indefinite leave to remain" - and the earliest promotional copies were in this order. (At this point, the album's first single was also scheduled to be "Minimal".) In early 2006, the running order was changed to its final version, some transitions were edited accordingly, and the album was finished.

In the car park there is a caravan for Neil, Chris, Matt and David to relax in between shots and to change clothes. Chris is yet to arrive, but Neil, David and Matt retire to discuss pressing issues of the day.
"We saw the Will Young video today," says Matt. "It's very good."
"What's he done?" asks Neil.
"Blue Pete,<' says Matt.
"He's camping it up a lot' notes David.
"Did you see the Top Gun one?" says Neil. "I'm astonished how the record company spend so much money making them an event:'
"I just think they should have gone for a good lace wig, rather than an acrylic thing," says Matt.
They discuss whether it's strange that Will Young should be recreating Blue Peter eras which he is too young to have watched.
"People often have nostalgia for something they weren't around for," says David.
"I had an argument with a friend about whether John Noakes had a hairy chest," says Neil. "I got the Blue Peter annual, and there he was, diving into a pool, and he did have a hairy chest:' He nods. "But we never liked Peter Purves."
"Did you ever go on Jim'll Fix It?" Matt asks him. "Did anyone want to meet you?"
"No," says Neil, answering the first question, if not the second.
They are called back into the theatre. A few minutes later, Chris sweeps in and takes in the scene.
"There's a lot going on in here' he says.
"Chris, it looks fantastic," says Neil.
"Well, that's a relief, isn't it?" says Chris.

He says how nice North London seemed on his way up here. "Oooh, satellite navigation was a good buy," he adds.
Matt and David come over to say hello.
"It's very good of you to do this on your day off," says Chris.
David holds out his hand. "Big fan," he says, earnestly.
"Thirty quid is 30 quid," shrugs Matt.
This leads them to discuss the things people say when you meet them. Neil mentions that he was recently introduced to the legendary - or perhaps even notorious - movie impresario Harvey Weinstein who said, "Loved your work on Crying Game".
"Did you produce that for George?" asks Matt.
Neil nods. "That was the moment when I thought George had got over the bad review in Smash Hits in 1982. And for a while he did. But not for long."
"What did you say?" asks Matt.
"I said he sounded a bit like David Sylvian," says Neil. He explains that it wasn't just that. "I hated their first album."
When they go back outside, they are shown something quite remarkable about this Winnebago. In its boot it has a Smart car.
"We must have that on tour," says Chris.

Back in the theatre, the Pet Shop Boys stand
by a stuffed ostrich and watch the proceedings.
It's quite a production.
"Well, I see where the money's gone," says Chris. "I've never seen as many people at work on a video shoot. It's a proper video, this."
"It's a video video' says Neil. "They're very good as us. I wonder if they'd like to do Top Of The Pops. It'd be great if they were us." A pause. "Of course a certain proportion of people wouldn't realise:'
"You know we're going to be here till three in the morning," Chris predicts.
"Absolutely," says Neil.
"We can go ice-skating while we're waiting," says Chris.
Dave Dorrell suggests that they come into town with him and have lunch at The Ivy.
"We've time for that, and dinner at The Ivy, probably," says Chris.
But of course they stay. There's catering here, anyway. Chris orders the chicken, ham and leek pie, and Neil opts for the soy cod and stir-fry vegetables.
"This whole area," says Neil, "reminds me of being at North London Polytechnic. My girlfriend Caroline lived close to here, on Alexandra Park Road."

In the next scene, Matt stabs the keyboard with a single finger, but only after David - who is wearing ugly false teeth - has prompted him with a nudge.
"It's too cruel," laughs Chris.
"We'll have to sue ourselves for libel," Neil suggests.
"What's great is;' says Chris, "isn't the orange jumpsuit what people wear in mental institutions? Or was it on chain gangs?"
David Walliams swans over.
"It's a bit of fun, isn't it?" he says in a camp voice.
"People are going to watch it and think, 'oooh, Chris has put on weight' ," says Matt.
"Pet Shop Boys Gormiess, the new album," says Neil. "Maybe that'll be the new video compilation, Gormiess."

Back in the Winnebago, David asks about
the summer touring plans and Neil says, "I was thinking of having a huge open air gig on the day of the World Cup Final for people who hate football:' He tells David that the fashion designer Hedi Slimane has become a fan of Little Britain.
"When Imeethim;' says David,"I just think he's thinking, 'you're not thin enough for my clothes'
Meanwhile Chris asks the video production people if they can send someone to fetch some chocolate. More specifically, he wants an Easter Egg: "A proper Easter Egg with chocolate buttons on the inside." He suggests that maybe they should get a few, just in case. A runner is sent in the Smart car.
Matt asks a question.
"Do you read your reviews?" he says.
"Yeah;' says Chris. "I don't go out of my way to:'
They discuss the debates that were had over the choice of first single from Fundamental. The British record company had decided that it should be "Minimal", whereas Neil and Chris had always assumed it would probably be "The Sodom and Gomorrah Show". It was the German record company who were immediately keen on "I'm with Stupid".
"What's the last single you had which crossed over?" asks David.
"'Go West';' says Neil.
Someone comes to take pudding orders. Both Little Britainers plump for Bakewell tart, Chris selects the bread and butter pudding, and Neil wants nothing.

The discussion moves on to the faults of the contemporary musical.
"Oliver!;' says Neil, by way of contrast, "every song is between excellence and genius. But when we went to see Les Mis is 1986 or 1987 we hated it. We left after 20 minutes. And we left because it was crap."
Then they talk about the photos in this week's tabloids purporting to be of Whitney Houston's private crack den.
"It was so sad, those pictures;' says Chris.
"It was horrible," Neil agrees.
"It was so untidy," says Chris.
David and Matt go to film an interview about Neil and Chris for the forthcoming Channel 4 documentary.
"We're going to go and slag you off;' David assures them.
"How long have you been together?" Matt asks.
"Twenty-five years;' says Neil.
"I might add ten years to that;' says Matt.

"You don't mind, do you?"
As they walk across the car park, David shouts back, "Don't eat all the Easter Eggs when they come."
Neil has calamitously lost his mobile phone in the week by leaving it in a taxi - losing not just numbers but loads of song ideas - and asks to go through Chris's phone address book to copy out some numbers. Patiently, he begins to do so. "That's a good trio, isn't it?" he mutters when he reaches the Ds. "David Furnish, David Walker, David Walliams..." (Later Neil will tell David of how, over Christmas, his phone was stolen temporarily by his nieces specifically because they wanted to find David Walliams phone number.)
In the theatre, Literally walks by just as David and Matt are finishing their TV interview.
..... the greatest pop act of the last twenty years," says David.
Matt pauses. "Almost as good as Erasure." As he gets up he starts singing~ from "Electricity"~ "it's the greatest show with the best effects..."
Back in the Winnebago Matt tells them what he has just said.
"You bitch' says Neil.
"We'll cut that ouC' says Chris.
They need to change now into their yellow (Matt) and blue (David) "Go West" jumpsuits, though for a while David wanders between costumes in his black underwear. "Just wandering around in my pants, slightly enjoying it' he says.
"Yours is more comfy than mine," says Matt, once the outfits are eventually on. "Mine's all sticky."
As everyone walks out into the open air, a fan rushes up, breathless at the sight of Matt and David.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"We're filming a pop video for them," says Matt, gesturing at Neil and Chris.
"Erasure," David explains.

Matt's mother now turns up, along with a
journalist called Boyd Hilton who usually works for Heat magazine but is currently writing a book about David and Matt and has been following them on their mammoth Little Britain tour. Matt asks his mother about the idea Neil has just suggested which the Pet Shop Boys came up with in the studio the other day
- doing a World Cup record sung by all the Little Britain characters to the tune of "Go West"~ its chorus being the football chant "we're shit and we know we are". (They thought of it because they'd read in a tabloid that Matt and David were planning to do a World Cup song with them though, like so many things in such tabloids, this turns out to be another random fiction.)

"Is it too rude?" Matt asks his mother. "Is 'shit' too rude?" echoes David. "It's a shame, but yeah," says Matt's mother.
"It'd be better doing 'two-nil to the Arsenal'. That'd be much better. Why does it have to be when they're doing badly? Why can't it be when they're doing well?"
"You wrote that," Matt points out to Neil and Chris, talking about the specific melody on their version of "Go West". "The Village People sang a different tune." He sings the two versions.
"Did we?" asks Neil. "I only listened to it once."
They discuss the surprising use of a swearword in the real non-radio version of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful". (When Matt's mother says the word in question, Matt looks shocked and says that he has never heard her say it before.)
"We've never had a swearword in a song, I don't think$' says Neil. "One, Chris won't let me."
Matt asks about the swearing in Sex Pistols songs - Neil is able to quote the relevant texts in detail - and David mentions Philip Larkin and starts quoting some of his less restrained lines.
"It's incredible," he says, of the poetry rather than the obscenities.
"It's all so bleak' says Neil.

David mentions that he recently gave a friend some Philip Larkin poetry, and also some Bob Dylan lyrics with particular songs marked:
"Idiot Wind", "You're A Big Girl Now", "Love Sick", "Make You Feel My Love". This prompts Chris to recall the trip he and Neil made to see Bob Dylan at the Brixton Academy late last year. "He sings on one note," Chris complains. "But I think we stayed longer than we thought we would. He's very charismatic."
David asks Neil about the outfit he wore at the Brits - a new Dior affair from the forthcoming season's collection - and offers a very firm opinion about neckwear. He thinks that there should be bow ties and real ties, but nothing in between. Neil disagrees. "I like the fact that it looks like a puritan preacher thing. Because bow ties always look a bit waiter-y."
Then he mentions the protests during Condeleeza Rice's visit to northern England, and they discuss how muted such protests are these days. Neil notes how much the political environment has changed since he was a student in the seventies, when even the Labour party was considered some kind of right-wing sell-out. "When I was at North London Poly, if you voted Labour you were considered a Nazi." He says that if someone had spoken to him in 1976 he would have seemed as though he fitted in with that kind of world view. "At the same time I used to read Evelyn Waugh's books," he says. "That was just a completely different part of my brain."
Boyd Hilton asks what people thought of the April Fool's story in The Guardian, making-believe at great length that Chris Martin had signed up to support David Cameron's Conservative party.
"I know someone who believed it," says Neil. (Chris says nothing now, though earlier he had been laughing about it.). "I put our new album cover art on our website, not realising it was April 1st," says Neil, "and in the comments they said, 'Come on, it's obviously a joke, it's April 1st."'
Matt and David argue about whose orange shoes are whose - they both get slightly insistent, even though the next shot is a close-up.

"That's how groups break up," Neil notes. "It isn't over the royalties, it's over the plimsolls."
Matt and David are soon back, the shot done.
"We're whizzing through the scenes now, aren't we?" says Chris.
"Are you getting fed up?" Neil asks them.
"No, no, no, not at all' says David. "We just don't want to be here too late:'
"We don't start getting filmed until you finish," Neil points out.
"Our first video shoot lasted... what time?" asks Chris.
"Twenty-four hours," says Neil.
"That's illegal," Matt points out.
David asks whether they have got lots of unreleased songs they can put on a boxed set in due course. They shake their heads. Pretty much everything has been used in their deluxe reissues.
"We could always write some," Chris suggests. Some unreleased 1985 songs, some unreleased 1988 songs, and so on.
"I love the idea of that;' says Neil. "Do some with Stephen Hague, some with Bobby
0..."
Back in the theatre, Matt and David are told that they have one more shot.
"Are they nearly done?" worries Chris. "They're going to miss the dinner."
"That's probably not as much of a priority for them as it is for you, Chris' says Neil.
At ten minutes past eight, the crew applaud. Matt and David are finished.
Nearly. One of the video crew runs up to David. "A slightly bizarre request," he says. "I need to take a photo of the back of your hand."

David acquiesces. "I get that a lot," he says.
(Presumably, it's for continuity purposes.)
"I wish we'd been in it with you somehow," says David. (They have filmed no scenes together, though it will appear as though they are communicating with each other in the video.) "I'd have liked to have interacted with you."
"Next video," says Neil.
"'Numb'?" suggests David.
"We shouldn't really do 'Numb' as a comedy single, should we?" wonders Chris.
"'Numb' would be a good second single," says David.
"I like 'A Little Respect' ," says Matt.
"That nearly went over my head," says Neil, projecting a slight edge into his voice. "But it didn't."

The Little Britain stars leave, the lamb curry
arrives and the Pet Shop Boys discuss fund-raising scandals in contemporary politics.
"They're all a let down, the lot of them;' says Neil. "That's what bugs me."
Time passes, and there is no sign of them being called to film their shot. A man from the video eventually comes to visit them.
"You're not going to need us for a long time;' says Chris.
"I don't think so," he says, uneasily.
"That wasn't a question;' Neil explains to him, "that was a statement."
They watch a bit of Frasier on the TV and discuss the pros and cons of Zane Lowe, then flick over to VH2. The programme is called The Nation's Greatest Lyricist.
"Marc!" exclaims Neil upon seeing Marc Bolan.
"Or is it Goldfrapp?" wonders Chris.
They watch on.
"How come our nation's greatest lyricist, sitting in this room, is not nominated?" wonders Chris.
He sits in the make-up chair.
"I'm terrified Tony Blair is going to resign before 'I'm with Stupid' comes out;' worries Neil. "Just like we were terrified Margaret Thatcher was going to lose the 1987 election just before Actually came out, ruining our album about Thatcherism, even while voting Labour."
He mentions that they've just recorded over 50 ringtones.
"To my mind they're the best ringtones ever done."
"And we've written three of them;' says Chris. (Three brand new pieces of music, he
means, rather than based on existing songs.)
"The 'I'm with Stupid' one, just with brass, it's brilliant - it's so annoying," says Neil. "It could give you a nervous breakdown."

Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2" comes on the TV and Chris insists on changing channel.
"Neil, it's your video;' he says. "You like this, don't you?"
"Oh, I love it' says Neil. It is Blink 182's video for "All The Small Things". "This is when they were good. I love it when they do the Backstreet Boys."
"I don't like this type of music though," Chris objects. "It sounds like Busted."
The waiting continues.
"This is what happens when you make a film, isn't it?" says Neil. "You stay in the Winnebago and you get cosy and slightly hysterical and you get a slightly sleazy feeling because you've had make-up on all day..."
They are supposed to be tied up and bound with ropes: David and Matt's prisoners. Worrying about that might pass the time.
"I might suffer from claustrophobia," says Chris. "Have you thought of that, Neil?"
"Yes," he says. "I'm already assuming I will be."
Chris laughs. "After all this, we won't be able to do it."
Neil sighs. "Oh, it's been a long day, hasn't it?"
"It has;' Chris agrees. "I feel like we've been here for days."
"It's always tiring, doing nothing," Neil points out.
At ten minutes past ten they are told, not for the first time, they must wait 15 minutes more.
"They said that over 15 minutes ago," Chris objects. "I'm leaving soon:' He answers a phone call. "We're still here... No, we haven't done anything yet... I reckon we'll be here till
11..."
"Eleven?" queries Neil. "More like midnight."
Chris flicks through the channels some more until eventually - much more than 15 minutes later - they are called to the set. Neil
puts on his top hat and checks himself in the mirror. "You know what this hat is?" he realises. "It's Marc Bolan on the cover of The Slider."

They take their seats, and ropes are coiled around them - as loosely as possibly whilst still trying to give the impression that they are tightly-bound and completely constricted. The director tries to convince them that they should react in various animated ways to their predicament, but their intuition is otherwise.
"I sort of think the Pet Shop Boys, being captured, would be indifferent;' says Neil. "We'd be nonchalant."
The director asks whether, when asked, "Did you enjoy the show?", they can look at each other and offer a reaction.
Neil looks at Chris. "That would be acting, wouldn't it?" he says, as though there may be little they disapprove of more. "We can try it."
It's decided that after they look at each other, Neil will yawn. The first time they do it, he yawns exactly as he does in real life - the same kind of real yawn seen on the Actually sleeve.
"Smaller yawn next time;' instructs the director.
"Is that not a small yawn?" Neil wonders. He does it a few times, and they still suggest the yawn could be reduced. He tries to accommodate them. Between takes he gives another huge, real yawn of his own and sings to himself some Kraftwerk: "we're showroom dummies..."
"We give a lot, don't we?" sighs Chris.
They want to try something else, so now Neil reacts by kind of shrugging with his face as he tips his head.
"I hope they don't feel they have to keep us here to justify the cost;' says Chris.
They are wrapped by 1130pm, after a long day's hanging around and maybe 40 minutes on set.
"I notice we don't get a round of applause;' says Chris. He's not too serious. "That wasn't too bad, was it?" he says in the Winnebago as he grabs one of the spare Easter Eggs to take home. "Can't wait to see it, actually."