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Russell: "The thing about Jarvis is that he tends to go to jumble sales and buy a load of useless old clutter. The mantlepiece would be covered with little pottery mice and those birds that dip into glasses. At first I had this hardline policy - I'd bung stuff into a carrier bag and stick it under his bed. But he just wouldn't stop getting stuff. How many people do you know who own five full-length mirrors? And moving house with him's a nightmare. He'll remember the elephant's foot umbrella stand but forget the cooker."

"Also, I don't rate him as a chef. Jarvis brought his girlfriend round for dinner once. He bought this chicken, which was black. And he's saying, Are chickens generally this colour raw? And I'm like, Well no, Jarvis, they're more generally pink. Anyway we sat down to eat and Jarvis brought in these potatoes and lettuce. So we're waiting for the rest of the food to arrive. But it never came. That was it."

"I say all this with the greatest affection. I ought to have known better, really. I'm a fastidious person. I like to keep things tidy. And Jarvis is just the opposite. That's why I left, because things were just sinking into squalor. Are you letting Jarvis give the case for the defence? Well, let me tell you... there isn't one."

"Would I live with him again? No."

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Nick: 1989

Nick Banks (drummer) was living in a shared house in Sheffield. There was a spare room. Jarvis needed somewhere to live...

Nick: "Jarvis turned up with this Transit van crammed with rubbish ... a cardboard house ... a little doll made out of plastic fruit. So I started helping out with all these bags and boxes. Then this car pulls up and Jarvis goes, Oh it's me driving lesson. He gets in and the car hops off like a kangaroo. We had to cart all the stuff by ourselves. At first we managed to keep the living room fairly bare, but every so often you'd find a fluffy gonk on the table and you'd think, Now whose might this be?"

"We lived together for about a year and then he went to London. I moved to London in '91 and lived with Steve. It was a 14th floor squat in Camberwell, at a place called Crossmount House. I think it's been featured in a few episodes of The Bill. It was quite orderly, though. We didn't have any dogs on strings. I can imagine living with other band members could be a problem with certain groups. But we were never the kind of outfit where people would suddenly bring out acoustic guitars and singing 'Cwm-by-a' at 5am."

"Would I live with him again? In an ideal world I'd have to say... No."

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Steve: 1990

After Jarvis moved to London, Steve Mackey (bass) flogged him the keys to a squat for £75. But the singer was evicted soon afterwards. Steve had heard the stories, of course, but thought the others were exaggerating. He told Jarvis he could move into his Camberwell abode.

Steve: "Have you spoken to Russell? I'm sure he didn't have many good Jarvis stories. Russell was very into efficiency. Some sort of Nietzschean phase. I've heard that before I joined he'd turn up at rehearsals with a check-list of jobs which had to be done before music could commence."

The main thing about Jarvis is his clutter. He is the skip king. It was a bad time, because I was at college and I was tired all the time. I'd come home just wanting to watch the TV and the front room would look like Andy Warhol's Factory. You couldn't move for Joe 90 annuals... My best memory of Jarvis was when we moved to Peckham, by which time the band was beginning to get a bit more popular. Jarvis started to get paranoid about signing on, so every second Tuesday he'd get dressed up in his grunge outfit - one of those hats which pull down right over your ears and a really scruffy jumper. I used to stay in and miss college just to see him. He never pulls his weight on the domestic front. He's not lazy, he'd just rather be doing other things. But you kind of trade those things for having someone who's fun to live with."

"Would I live with him again? Well, I've nowhere to stay at moment so I wouldn't rule it out. I always enjoy living with Jarvis. On the other hand, maybe I do see enough of him as it is."

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Jarvis Cocker: The case for the defence

Jarvis: "I suppose I do have a lot of stuff. But most of the time I was living with Nick and Russell I was on the dole and there was nothing to do during the day. To satisfy my hunter-gatherer instincts I would go round to jumble sales and collect stuff. I've never really been a person to live with, just you and one other person. It puts too much strain on the relationship. So the time I lived with Russell probably wasn't so great. It was also really cold. It was above a butcher's shop. And my bed was above the butcher's fridge, which made it even worse."

"I can't remember turning up with a black chicken. On the other hand, it's only been the last three or four years that I've started to learn about cooking. I did my first soufflé the other day. It was a success. It rose. It's true that Russell would turn up to rehearsals with a list of domestic chores. But I could never concentrate on that kind of domestic thing. It used to depress me. I'd think, God, I want to be a famous person in a band. I shouldn't have to deal with things like pots and hoovers."

"I did find things out about people by living with them. Russell's got a fondness for walking about without many clothes on. That can be a bit unsettling early in the morning. The thing I found most distaseful about Nick was the his tea. He's one of those people who just shows the cup the teabag. It always used to make me feel ill seeing him drink a pint-sized mug of this milky water. Steve... Well, Steve just made me feel dirty because he was always having baths. He'd have a bath at least once a day. Sometimes twice. I used to wonder what he got up to in there. The main thing that probably got on Steve's nerves about me was that when I have a shave I do tend to leave all the bits of hair in the sink. But my excuse for that is that I haven't got me glasses on so I can't see that it's there. I know that that really got on his nerves. He even told me off about it once.

In fact, the musician was instrumental in shaping the sexy, shopworn look that Pulp perfected in the early-mid 90s, a look that’s weathered better than other, more leisurewear-inclined strains of the Britpop aesthetic. An occasional antiques dealer with a weakness for “Scandi-modernism” and an eye for a dashingly cut suit, Senior bowed out of the band in 1997, after their “Common People”-era peak, before returning for their triumphant comeback shows of 2011/12 – here, he looks at some of the inspirations behind the band’s mismatched aesthetic.

TAKE A BAG TO A JUMBLE-SALE AND FILL IT UP

“We were all great lovers of jumble sales, although we kind of abhorred each other’s tastes – Jarvis would always look at suits like, ‘Look how wide these lapels are!’, and I’d be like, ‘Christ, what does he look like?’ You don’t know what you’re going to find at a jumble sale. You’re going to get things that other people aren’t wearing – you’re not choosing it so much, you’re just getting this random bag of stuff and then you get a new version of yourself. I used to enjoy the idea of being really conservative in my dress-sense – you could be a revolutionary communist dressed like a bank manager with a briefcase! I really did have a briefcase, by the way.

“Jumble-sale chic was a term that got applied to us a lot. It wasn’t just a poverty thing, it was a pride thing. We would come in and go, ‘My underwear cost more than my outfit!’ (Our look) was kind of artless, it was whatever you chanced upon, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an intellect about it. We were proud of our cheapness!”

CHOOSE TIGHT OVER BAGGY

“Baggy was a genre but it was also a kind of look...or a ‘non-look’. For a while (in the early 90s) our music was quite baggy – we were using that kind of wah-wah sound. So we became quite popular in Manchester, but even though we liked the music we had this contrary thing of wanting to be different – like, all the band t-shirts at the time were really baggy, so we went the other way, but it was hard finding t-shirts as tight as we wanted them.”

IF YOU’RE IN A BAND, COPY YOUR AUDIENCE

“Our audience influenced our look a lot. People would come to our concerts in feather boas and they would end up finding their way into our photoshoots. Or you’d have girls in the audience with necklaces made out of sweets and they’d be carrying Barbie dolls, but they weren’t 15 years old, they would be 23 and doing a degree in postmodern irony! We had Love Hearts thrown at us at shows, so we ended up getting plates made in the form of Love Hearts for one of our videos. We were getting things sent in the post – Candida (Doyle, keyboardist) got jars of kitsch jewellery from people who were picking up on the fact that we were just like them, finding our style on a budget. We had cool audiences, they were often very interesting people. And we fed back into it – our look would give people a bit of boldness, just to walk through town in those outfits. It something that’s articulated best in the ‘Misshapes’ video.”

TRY TO BE A MOD, BUT DON'T TRY TOO HARD

“Mod became a big current in Britpop through bands like Blur and Menswear. I’d always liked the clobber, but I didn’t conceive of myself as a mod until I went to the seaside on bank holidays and found that rockers were looking at me funny. I used to wear Union Jack socks before it became a Britpop symbol, just because I thought it looked good. Then there was the famous cover of Select with Brett Anderson against the backdrop of the Union Jack that really crystallised the feeling, and then 18 months later Oasis had a guitar with a Union Jack on it. I just thought that was a bit try-hard.”

IF YOU’RE GOING TO BE GLAM, BE TRASHY

“We all had this idea that Top of the Pops had gotten boring around 1973, when people stopped wearing outrageous outfits. But our take on glam was rather shamefully not Bowie and Roxy Music, it was the kind of glam that will forever be lodged in some town outside Birmingham, like The Glitter Band, Slade and Sweet. But there was pathos in that.

“We were into all that twisted funfair stuff. Glitter for us wasn’t just shiny, it was seedy ­– it was, like, the guy making a snuff in a garage on the outskirts of town, if you know what I mean? It was the David Lynch take on glamour. Jarvis loved all the frilly-shirted 70s stuff, which I hated because you end up looking like a working men’s club turn and that was exactly what I was trying to get away from. Mates I knew from school were playing in those sorts of bands, so the idea that you’d skate anywhere near that was absurd to me. But that was part of the tension in the band. And it was a good tension, I think.”

GET ALL YOUR SUITS TAILORED

“This was later, when we had a bit more money to throw around – but of course, the suits would all be based on the jumble-sale suits we loved that were falling to bits. There’s great joy to getting a suit made. It’s working out all the little nuances, like whether you want 13 and a half inches at the bottom of your trousers or if you can get away with a 13 – but will that make you look like a comedy mod? People did say a number of times that I was the best-dressed man in Britpop, which was nice but I also used to think, ‘Well there isn’t much competition!’”

FOOL PEOPLE INTO BELIEVING YOU’RE SEXY

“You can see it in the pictures with Jarvis. He looks like a gawky freak one day and in the next photoshoot he’s being the Jarvis you know. My Auntie Val, who liked spivs and wide-boys, had had this crush on Jarvis for a while, and we were like, ‘What are you talking about? He looks like a bad pub comedian!’ but she loved it. Jarvis started announcing it from the stage – ‘This is for Auntie Val!’ The week after he was Jarvis the sex symbol. But then he’d come offstage and he’d be clipping his toenails… The idea of this guy being a sex symbol made us burst out laughing, but he was, you know? I mean, there was a bit of postmodern irony from our fans in the whole ‘throw your knickers at Jarvis’ thing – it wasn’t really teenyboppers. But it ended up becoming the reality.”

Freak out the Squares: Life in a Band Called Pulp by Russell Senior is out now via Aurum Press

Photos from pinterest

The Fruits of Passion Extract from Truth & Beauty: The Story of Pulp by Mark Sturdy.

Direction and identity certainly weren't lacking when, his initial plan of producing it with the Crucible Youth Theatre having fallen through, Russell decided to employ the largely idle remnants of Pulp to present his "Dadaist piece of agit-prop", The Fruits of Passion, to the public. For the project, Russell, Jarvis, Magnus and Tim dubbed themselves The Wicker Players (after named after the somewhat insalubrious area of Sheffield that housed the former silk factory where Magnus lived, and of which Tim was the caretaker), roping in a couple of friends, Steven Faben and Ellie Ford, to act in the play, and Magnus' flatmate Peter 'Manners' Mansell to help out behind the scenes.

Dig Vis Drill vocalist Ogy McGrath was also asked to be in it, "but I'd written a play at the time called Friendship House, and after Russell read that I think he kind of went off the idea of me being in it! The Fruits of Passion had characters like First Authoritarian and Second Authoritarian, and I wasn't sure which authoritarian to play. Russell goes 'There's no difference'. 'But I need to get into my character, do you want me to be low authoritarian, high authoritarian or what?' Great sense of humour, Russell. One day they'll find it and give it him back. I liked him back then though - I think I was the only one in Sheffield who did, so I was ahead of my time in that sense . . . "

The raison d'être of the play, which ran for four performances at various venues in Sheffield during December 1983, was the provocation of its audiences. "It was kind of Zurich 1919 revolutionary, very much inspired by Dada," says Russell. "The idea was that people would either walk out in disgust or stay to the end and think it was really cool, and the people who'd stay would be the people who we'd start the socialist revolution with . . . "

The action was interspersed with musical interludes from Jarvis, Russell and Magnus. "The stage directions were something like 'Put vacuum cleaner on stage. Switch it on. Leave it on until audience becomes restless'," remembers Jarvis with amusement. "The climatic scene was me eating a plate of fake shit at a job interview. I remember the last performance we did, at the Crucible, it looked really real. I looked at Russell and he had this look in his eyes, and I thought 'I hope you aren't testing me out here'. It turned out he'd employed a new recipe, which I think was peanut butter and chocolate. But it looked very realistic."

"It was very intense," says Russell of The Fruits of Passion. "After getting about half the people walking out of this thing and the other half thinking it was really cool, we decided to continue things and make a bit of music."

The Fruits of Passion

Dates: November/December 1983, Yorkshire Artspace Society, Sheffield November/December 1983, Hallamshire Hotel, Sheffield 8 December 1983, Sheffield University Octagon Centre 10 December 1983, Crucible Studio Theatre, Sheffield

The Wicker Players (1983-1985)

Various open mic / ‘cabaret’ events organised by Russell Senior at the Hallamshire Hotel, mostly toward the end of 1983. Participants included Jarvis, Magnus Doyle, Saskia Cocker, Michael Paramore and Tim Allcard.

The only known dates are: 18 December 1983 - ‘Wicker Players Christmas Panto’, Hallamshire Hotel, Sheffield 26 February 1985 - ‘Wicker Players Mystery Event’, Hallamshire Hotel, Sheffield

Unlike everything else in Japan, it's very cheap, it's a cross between Bladerunner, a pirate's den, a bookies and a cockfighting pit. No over-bowing, women are laughing, being brassy and not taking tiny steps. We're the only westerners but we're here with our host who is Japanese and Rover who has tattoos and stuff, so in this wild Eastern bar we kind of fit in.

Rover has fallen in love, he hasn't decided who it's with yet, but is winking and smiling at several contenders just to be on the safe side. A woman in silver hot-pants swaggers over to him, blowing smoke in his face. Strangely, our host has no problem with this at all and now seems to positively want US to talk to women... and it all becomes a bit clearer.

Our guide book says, "The industrious men of 17th-Century Japan liked to relax at the end of the day with hard liquor in the company of actresses and prostitutes". The Japanese guide to English etiquette no doubt says, 'The hard-working musicians of 20th Century England love nothing better at the end of the day than to snort cocaine from the pockmarked thighs of groupies"

Soooo... we weren't being protected from the fans in the bar - they (nice girls from good families) were being protected from the foreign devils. They needn't have bothered, but I'm glad they did because this place is ace. After midnight all the deference and daintiness goes out of the window and the drunken bonhomie so familiar to us arrives on a bullet train. Bang!

People are being chummy with us, offering us saké and amusing themselves at our gaucherie, like we'd laugh at one of them putting brown sauce on their cornflakes. Rover keeps asking for 'Tom Cat soup', which transpires to be tasty things on skewers not unlike our British shish kebabs. A woman comes over and it transpires she's offering to have sex with all of us. We make our excuses and leave, having convinced her that Rover has three penises. We leave him extending the hairy hand of international friendship.

In the morning, Rover appears at breakfast devoid of his black leather, wearing an all-white pyjama suit, his head completely shaven, muttering something about the seventh law of enlightenment. He later claims to have ended up in a bar with a scantily-clad schoolgirl kicking a giraffe.

The fans at the hotel in Tokyo think we're super cool but they think they are too - this is better. Don't be like us, oh no, be even more Japanese please. "You must be feeling tired," sympathises a fan who's been waiting up all night to see us. Well actually no, we always look dog rough, but you don't want to hear that, do you? You want us to be plastic fantastic, you've put your money in a vending machine and you get Pulp just how you want it.

Rover has just come in disappointed. Apparently there are vending machines in Tokyo where you can buy schoolgirls' underpants... used. Anyway, turns out he's bought some sixth-form boy's ones, which aren't quite what he had in mind.

Shopping! The toy shop is slightly disappointing. The real toy shop is called Electric Street, where you can buy a gadget for everything. I buy a Jacuzzi for sunglasses; it works, they come out clean and relaxed.

Early evening. We're taken out for a traditional Japanese meal. Shoes must be removed before sitting cross-legged at a low table. We choose a fish from a tank called a 'blow fish'. The sexual organs of this fish are deadly poisonous. Every year 40 people die from eating this fish, along with 40 chefs who must take the honourable way out. The fish is brought to the table with the organs removed and the edible strips of raw flesh arranged in a pattern at the side.

The fish, however, is far from dead, it leans its head upwards looking at us. "This fish has died for you and you must respect it," says our host's girlfriend, who is administering the food ceremony. I don't think anyone's very happy about this and Rover blurts out, "But it isn't dead and if you don't take it away and kill it, I'm going to get my knife out and kill it!"

The fish is taken away to be killed. It tastes like raw fish. The English are drinking saké while the Japanese drink lager. The English have also bought cool cameras in Electric Street and snap away furiously. 'Bloody tourists!' think the Japanese. You probably think it's really weak not to speak out more forcefully about some of the things we see, but we're guests here and must respect their customs. However distasteful it seems, it's probably less hypocritical than our own attitudes to eating animals. Vegetarians be warned: the concept is not understood here and saying, "I don't eat dead animals" often results in a live one being brought.

After the meal we go through a ritual humiliation, Japanese style. 'Karaoke Is Joysound!' says the sign. Hmmmm... Unlike in England, you get a private room with your mates, who choose a song for you to sing and you have to get up and do it. I get 'Trouble' by Shampoo, not something I would ordinarily be inclined to sing in company. Jarvis gets a very badly translated version of MC Hammer's 'Can't Touch This' in which "legit" comes out as "Leggit", etc, etc.

And for Rover, we choose 'Gimmie A Man After Midnight', which he isn't very happy about. On the way out, we see a bloke squatting in the middle of the road staring at traffic which stops in front of him. We are taking the piss a bit, which turns out to be a very bad idea because this is not a drunk, but a Yakuza hard man staking out his territory. Our host is concerned and runs on ahead to make sure there are no more. I recollect the fearsome knives and weaponry for sale in Electric Street and stop taking the piss. The Yakuza chop off their little finger as an initiation - you do not want them as your enemies.

The first concert in Tokyo goes very well. All the concerts sold out very quickly and there is anticipation amongst the stylish and supposedly reserved crowd. I've never seen so much energy without aggression. Everything's running like clockwork. Back in the hotel foyer, which is the size of a football pitch, we are greeted by gift-bearing fans. In the middle of the foyer is a bar area, demarcated by a complete ring of chrome about 2ft-high.

None of the fans dare enter this magic circle. We are joined by some of Steve's supermodel friends called Ginger, Manx, Feline, Persian and Pussy. They are impossibly thin and drape themselves around the bar, nibbling nuts. Rover approaches, his eyes roll around in their sockets like a fruit machine. "How long is it since you tasted some 100 per cent British beef?' he asks. Bingo!

Meanwhile, back in Blighty, we're being lampooned by Spitting Image along the lines of "I want to live like famous people"; fair enough, but what would you do, all my friends and brothers? The second concert in Tokyo we go on to Beethoven's Ninth. It's a flip chill winter bastard outside but inside all is horror show, there are even quite a number of mates in the audience. We fight through a few minor technical problems to cobble together an exciting show. Jarvis has to go off to replace a lost contact lens. To the Japanese, work equals style, times content. I guess you have to live some distance from Camden to appreciate this.

Battling through adversity in a cold climate is something our cultures share, it gives a certain edginess to the evening, which is a positive thing 'cos, as I'm sure you know, there's quite a lot of darkness under all this Pulp froth. Jarvis introduces all the songs in Japanese and this goes down very well. The Japanese seem to get this, they like a good present to be in a good box. The idea that style could possibly subtract from content would not make any sense to them.

Pulp had to get popular with the public before the feral scum-sucking tabloid British music press (Love you too - NME) took any real notice, and then it was in a cartoonised and, to my mind, rather humiliating way.

We awake with the rising sun like the people in the cornflakes advert you always aspire to. I've started rooting through my paltry belongings for presents to give back to fans. The best I can do is sunglasses, which are much appreciated. However, next time in the foyer, I see that half a dozen pairs of my former sunglasses are being worn and it's embarrassing, mainly because it's impersonal and a cheap con, like giving beads for land.

Many of the presents we receive are very thoughtful indeed, very personal and apt. We give the fans so little attention, don't even bother to learn their names and they give us so much. Why these kind, intelligent people do something, on the face of it, so uncool is beyond me, but I'm not complaining.

One of the many preconceptions was that we would be yammered away at about other bands, much as in the rest of the world, only more so and in a comical Japanese accent... "Ah Erastica, you know Bobby Girrespie? You know Brur?" This is definitely not the case; it almost seems impolite to mention another band when they're so focused on you. So that's another preconception, that they're impersonal.

Also going is a well-reasoned belief in the supremacy of European culture, see ya. Actually there is one exception. They do keep giving us pictures of Menswear and assuring us that they are, well, as if they are our long lost children. We've seen so many cheesy pictures of them grinning red-eyed, in Hawaiian shirts that severe loss of ace-faceness has occurred.

The last show in Tokyo is less frenetic, but very good; we play well and do a rare-for-us second encore. Jarvis has sustained a finger injury and is taken to the hospital where an already painful finger is subjected to squeezing, pricking, burning and electrocution.

The tour manager had only come into t'doctor's office to bring t'singer but they gave him t'stick and all! It was noticed that he had a cold and he had a man kneel on his back attaching crocodile clips to his nose, electrocuting him so he thrashed about like a pinhead, his neck pulsing alarmingly. Needless to say they both confessed. God knows what they'd do if you're really ill. No wonder everyone looks so healthy, they're scared shitless to be ill.

Our last meal in Japan, at our request, involves no live animals. We give a present to our host, who then proceeds to blub uncontrollably for the rest of the meal. Any preconceptions that these are cold people went way back. As the orders are being placed, one of the record company men pipes up, "I like Beetles!" Well almost. He stands up and starts to reel off his repertory of the Fab Four's songs which is quite extensive. We're used to this kind of excellently barking mad behaviour, so it's alright. Go buddy go!

We assemble early in the lobby for departure, Jarvis has gone on ahead dressed as a Hasidic Jew to avoid the crowds. Like many well-known celebrities, Jarvis employs a double. Jarvis' double (You may have seen him in the 'Mis-Shapes' video) has been up all night drinking in a dangerous club and staggers into the foyer not only refusing to sign autographs but swearing at anyone who comes near him before failing over a sofa and collapsing on the floor.

Safely checked in at the airport, we ascend an escalator waving gaily to the tearful fans. "Please come back to Japan soon," they plead. "We will, we will," we promise. It's a promise we are to keep because it is the wrong escalator and leads nowhere. After waiting round the corner for some time, the crowd at the bottom is still there so we have to descend the escalator, waving to the now laughing fans. "Welcome back to Japan," they say. Ah ha! Enough, enough, no more gratitude. Let's go somewhere where it's rude.

The record company, who must be ill, offer to pay our room service bill. Oh gullible company did ye ken, ye'd be picking up the tab for half a million yen?

Nietzsche would have aphorised the Pulp philosophy as: 'I have my feet on the ground and my head in the clouds, thus I grow taller.' There is, of course, a combustibility to this. We draw our inspiration from elevating ordinary life, therefore ordinary people relate to it, therefore we become famous, therefore we are no longer common people, therefore we lose the sap that pushes us to the clouds and it goes snap! This is exactly how it should be.

By example, Japan has injected a certain amount of crackle back into this fragile alliance. Perhaps we can last until the stroke of midnight New Year's Eve 1999. Pop!

With the release of biography ‘Freak Out The Squares’, PULP man Russell Senior remains fiercely proud of the accomplishments of Sheffield’s finest. Louise Brown talks to a uniquely British man about a uniquely British band.

THE rock biography; that tome of scintillating scandal and sordid excess, where musicians can retire disgracefully airing all of their worst behaviours alongside shocking barbs against colleagues, rivals and the waifs and strays they met along their path of rock and roll hedonism. We, mere mortals, lap them up, each page depicting the charmed lives of music’s most notorious characters.

‘Freak Out The Squares: Life In A Band Called Pulp’, by Pulp guitarist, violinist and self-confessed “grownup of the group’, Russell Senior, is the latest in rock memoir overload, and we settle in for a wild ride of mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits. In fact, what we get is a lot of tea, games of chess and mild-mannered facts about minerals. Did you know that if you add iodine to an axolotl it turns into a newt?

But Pulp were a different class, weren’t they? They did not have the cockney cheek of Blur, not the brash Mancunian swagger of Oasis, they were the psychedelic avant garde art experiment, who had tried for a decade to claw themselves out of Sheffield’s agitprop pop scene, who found themselves in the right place, at the right time and stumbled upon the holy grail of indie gold with era defining anthems ‘Common People’ and ‘Disco 2000’.

Sardonic and as well-presented as Jarvis Cocker in one his jumble sale suits, ‘Freak Out...’ is ‘The Royle Family’ of rock biogs, in that nothing actually happens but it is in the ennui and the unglamorous truthfulness that the writer’s Midas touch is revealed.

‘Freak Out...’ is laugh out loud funny, because, of course, pre-fame Pulp devised a stage set of toilet paper and tin foil only for it to crumble around them, of course they set fire to a prized palm tree in Toulouse with a misfired firework, and the highlight of their first ever Top Of The Pops performance was, of course, eating Mariah Carey’s biscuits.

This is not sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll, more atypical British fumbling of the bra-straps, white-outs after one toke of Black Grape’s joint and playing so out of tune it actually made the band the unique freaks we came to love.

But if it’s not going to a be a tell-all page-turner of bolshy Britpop bragging, then why write it at all? “I kind of felt I ought to write it,” says Russell, his Yorkshire twang ever-giving him a tone of sarcasm and weariness. Speaking shortly before his appearance at Manchester’s Louder Than Words festival (Louderthanwordsfest.com).

“Astronauts, they seem very inarticulate. They’ve been to the moon, but they can’t say anything about it, so I thought, well, I can be loquacious hopefully, and as an eye-witness, I thought I should do it, especially since there were some programmes on Britpop a few years back and they seemed really lame. They didn’t get to the heart of it. I want to try and put people in that dislocated world, the duty of the witness really.”

Britpop, what actually was it? From the turn of the 1990s until the chimes of the new Millennium were rung in, it seemed like the British pop music, and art, worlds, for that matter, were The Zeitgeist. Tracey Emin was making headlines with unmade beds, Damien Hirst was pickling bovine and bands like Blur, Oasis and Pulp, who couldn’t sound more unlike one other if they tried, were as iconic as Ginger Spice in a Union Jack frock.

“It’s not a genre, is it?” Russell ponders. “It’s not like reggae, it’s not a sound. Saint Etienne were deconstructing dance and yet they were Britpop. It was a group of outsiders from different angles, having a go at making pop music that was vaguely credible. It was a rejection of the world that was around us at the time, but the rejection took different forms. It’s not a musical form, really. You can’t teach it. It’s a funny one, isn’t it? You look back and think, well, what was it? Because it didn’t seem like anything coherent at the time, certainly not artistically.”

“Great guitarists like Bernard Butler and Richard Hawley don’t intimidate me because we all do a different thing. They may be able to play ‘All Along The Watchtower’ better than Hendrix but they can’t do spare and spiky and proddy as well as me.”

One of the motifs throughout the book is just how bad Pulp were as musicians. It starts with Russell reviewing Jarvis’ band for his fanzine and referring to the songs as “dirges” but “the appearance of the frontman is entertaining”, however the two became friends and Russell joined Pulp not to bring any musical splendour to the act, in fact, it led the group down an even more outré and unconventional rabbit hole. This self-deprecation almost does as a disservice to the group that ten years later would give the British musical canon pop gold like ‘Something Changed’.

“We learned,” Russell laughs when challenged. “But one of the good things about not having the musical theory, is that you do things that are, technically speaking, out of tune. I think it frees things up. I avoided learning, I was of that mindset. I wanted to find something around another corner, so there’s an almost wilful determination to retain a naivety in a way. We were anti-muso.

We had proper, in inverted commas, musicians audition for us and we just didn’t want them because we wanted somebody that was enfant savage. It sounds a bit ridiculous now, and yeah, we did get to learn about chords as time went on, so it’s strange in a way because, in the end, Pulp craft the perfect pop song, they don’t make a random extreme noise terror, but that was the roots of it. It ended up as pop music, almost by accident really.”

The band did set out to be a pop band though, Russell makes no claim to the other throughout the first half of the book, which shows a warts-and-all side to Pulp before the Britpop boom. They didn’t shy away from the spotlight, “Or want to be an underground, sell-no-records, indie purity thing,” Russell confirms.

“With the C86 movement, they seemed to take succour from how few records they’d sold, like that was a mark of integrity. We thought that was guff and saw not selling records as failure, so I think, in a way, we stood out from the crowd, in that ‘we are going to entertain and we are going to sell records’. It was not very cool at the time.”

“Outside the Cambridge Corn Exchange a young man approached me. There was something funny about him, then he attempted to pass me a wrap of drugs. I refused and then noticed a cameraman with a long lens taking photographs. This was a set-up, imagine the consequences if I’d taken the wrap. That bastard was prepared to ruin my life for a made-up story.”

The price of fame is high, though, and Russell is candid in his dissection of it. “It’s safe to say [that I hate fame]. It was a downer, there was a certain purity and innocence to the Britpop thing, despite all the excess. It seemed a bit of a charmed life really, and then you hit reality of things and you’re cynical. I had a happy view of it and I liked our fans, and it didn’t seem like this cynical rock world to me, it seemed like something light and fluffy.

I don’t know if I’ve stressed it enough in the book but we were very much ‘of’ our fans. We were jumble sale kids. People would look at you funny in the street, and then you were in the sanctity of the concert where there were other strange people, so there was this secret little club of outsiders, and it was a nice thing.”

Of all the Britpop bands, Pulp seemed the most approachable, the most down-to-earth, the most likely to invite you in for a cuppa if you were camped outside their house in December waiting for an autograph. “It’s true,” laughs Russell, as I tell him a story of a friend for whom that happened to.

“And on the whole, I have had my differences with the members of the band, but basically they’re all fairly decent. I wouldn’t say we were prudes but I suppose we were a bit, in that Yorkshire way. We were well-brought up and had decent manners, and no we didn’t hold with bad behaviour at all.”

Laughing about some of the unpretentious, no-nonsense Yorkshire-ness of ‘Freak Out The Squares’, we promise Russell that we won’t paint him completely as rock ‘n’ roll’s least likely, or as a thoroughly decent bloke too much, a real model of the common people. “If it’s true to say it,” he laughs.

“All that Northern stuff, there’s two strands to Sheffield. One is the by-heck whimsy and they get terribly excited about cooling towers getting knocked down. I can’t be doing with that professional Northern-ness, but there’s always a form of Sheffieldness that’s this Dadaist intense thing and I guess I cleave to the latter persuasion really. I don’t really do Northern whimsy.

This is an unusual interview in a way because most people are trying to get me to dish more dirt and I’m like, ‘I haven’t got any more’.

It’s honest in that it does own up to the fact that there wasn’t much in the way of groupies.”

“When we got on the bus, the back room had a general air of a Western saloon – cigarettes, whiskey and wild, wild women. The tour manager interrupted the reverie with the unfortunate phrase: ‘Excuse me ladies, we’ve got to shoot off now’. Everyone was a winner. The girls could hold their heads up high, and no one had to shag in the toilet looking at the ‘No Solids’ sign and wake up feeling like yesterday’s fish and chips.”

“The chronicle of Pulp, the true and honest chronicle of Pulp would take up a shelf of books,” Russell sighs when we do ask him if he was perhaps too polite and left out some of the more outlandish tales from the road. “If you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all.

There could’ve been lots of moaning about this, that and the other but it would all be rather trivial. There would be no major revelations, so even if I had the inclination to write a kiss-and-tell, put-the-boot-in book I’d have been really thin on material for it. I’m actually being quite frank, and in a way, brave, in admitting that it’s not always that exciting and if you win the ‘hang out with Pulp for the day’ prize you’d probably choose not to do it again."

“People want Pulp to live in the Monkees house and all be great mates and I don’t have to put the dagger, because people’s view of Pulp is quite a benign one. I can’t remember the last time anyone said anything unkind to me about it, it’s awfully fluffy all of this and I feel a little bit guilty that there’s not more bite but the truth is that people have a lot of affection for Pulp and I’ve no desire to change that.”

The book starts with Russell carefully considering Jarvis’ invitation to reunite the old gang for a one-off Glastonbury performance, flits back to when he first saw Jarvis “murder” (his words) ‘Wild Thing’ by The Troggs while his bass player fell off the stage, follows his acceptance into the Pulp fold and acts as a witty diary of the band’s 2011 comeback and mid-’90s highs.

It allows us a bird’s eye view of Britpop in ascendance – from its biggest stories (Pulp unwittingly to blame for pitting Blur and Oasis against each other with scurrilous gossip about who said what about Justine Frischmann) and wildest excesses (Russell lays claim to being responsible for Britpop folly Menswear, who signed to Island for a ludicrous fee and actually weren’t very good at all) but while he seemed, on the face of it all, to have had a jolly good time, the reunion was a one-off for him, despite protestation from both band and fans.

“Well, phone calls have come, quite a number of times, and things didn’t entirely wind down when it was supposed to, and so I can say that [I’m done] with reasonable degrees of certainty, because there were things that I’ve not done, like playing The Royal Albert Hall and so I’ve resisted those, but I’m very romantic about Pulp,” he admits, when pushed to see if he would tread the boards just one more time and had this book maybe triggered a little bit of wanderlust in him.

“Not everything in my life is as pure as that, but that’s one thing I like to keep it pure. I don’t wish to reduce it by cashing in on it, although you could say I’m doing that with this book. I could’ve tried to pump up the controversy, and I would have sold more copies but I’m quite romantic about it, and protective about the legacy.”

Now a full-time writer he admits that “I got my violin down so I could play it but I’ve not, it’s got dust on it. We weren’t musicians, I really don’t feel like I was. I don’t know how to play any other songs all the way through apart from Pulp songs, and I don’t sit around playing the guitar. What’s next? Writing! A geology-themed mystery romance, a book on the life of Edwin of Northumbria, and another one on foraging. Eclectic and uneconomic! Choose the things that are least likely to sell and do that, that’s what I’m doing.”

Of course he is, of course the foppish, besuited outsider from Britpop’s most bizarre and stubbornly contrary and peculiar band has swapped the riches and adulation of pop music for writing books about mushrooms and ancient kings. What else would he do? Like we said, Pulp and Russell Senior were of a different class, and we wouldn’t change them for the world.

‘Freak Out The Squares: Life In A Band Called Pulp’ is available now from Aurum Press Ltd

Favourite drink?

JARVIS: Cresta (discontinued) STEVE: Bloody Mary NICK: Chocolate milk, lager, tea RUSSELL: Champagne CANDIDA: Irish Baileys Original Cream / Earl Grey tea

Favourite fruit?

JARVIS: Cherries (Hard to get this time of year) STEVE: Banana NICK: Don't do fruit, nor veg if poss. RUSSELL: Passion CANDIDA: Peach Favourite food?

JARVIS: Boil in the bag cod in butter sauce STEVE: Broccoli NICK: Anything in a pastry or crust. And chips RUSSELL: Italian CANDIDA: Vegetarian

Favourite planet?

JARVIS: Earth (all others are lifeless) STEVE: Rock NICK: Uranus - silly name RUSSELL: Earth CANDIDA: Earth Favourite toy when you were a child?

JARVIS: Major Matt Mason STEVE: Evel Knieval NICK: Action Man - the one with the beard and skimmed hairdo. RUSSELL: Scalextric CANDIDA: Billy Favourite fairground ride?

JARVIS: Log flume STEVE: Bouncy castle NICK: Umbrellas, revolving type RUSSELL: Ghost train CANDIDA: Ghost train Favourite TV show ever?

JARVIS: "It's Garry Shandling's Show" STEVE: American Gladiators NICK: Top of the Pops + Pans People, Legs & Co etc... RUSSELL: Pogles' Wood CANDIDA: 'Shine on Harvey Moon' 1st series What would you like for your birthday?

JARVIS: An Austin Allegro estate STEVE: Be with my friends NICK: It's on 28th July. I want a Tetris Nintendo or Blockmaster RUSSELL: Lots of money CANDIDA: One of those glass globes that have electricity beams inside (ultra violet) that hit the place your hands touch. Bad explanation I know, but if you want to buy me one I'll detail you more. What did you get?

JARVIS: Brut gift set STEVE: They all stopped returning my calls NICK: Some crap jeans RUSSELL: A bag of marbles CANDIDA: Not my birthday yet, you'll have 'til 20 August

Where is heaven on earth?

JARVIS: Conisbrough STEVE: Catcliffe NICK: The moment you wake up at 8am and can turn round and enjoy another 4hrs in bed. Bliss. RUSSELL: It's a nightclub in London CANDIDA: Right here What is the worst thing that could happen?

JARVIS: Run out of things to say STEVE: Nick Banks solo album NICK: Having to get a proper job RUSSELL: Death CANDIDA: I could be sick or Pulp could never make it What would you be for a day?

JARVIS: You STEVE: David Icke NICK: Michael Caine, Elvis, Ginsters taster RUSSELL: Nick Banks CANDIDA: Me Best thing about Sheffield?

JARVIS: Henderson's Relish STEVE: Steel NICK: Great TV reception RUSSELL: Cheap steel CANDIDA: Sheffield Best thing about being in a pop group?

JARVIS: Carrying large items of musical equipment STEVE: Riches & fame (I've heard) NICK: It's a good excuse to act like a tit 24hrs a day RUSSELL: Travelling to exotic places, meeting interesting people and killing them CANDIDA: Getting free records, free concerts + meeting popstars, maybe even becoming one!! When will you give up?

JARVIS: 24th October 1994 STEVE: When tomorrow comes NICK: When I lose both arms in a car smash RUSSELL: When we can't afford it anymore CANDIDA: Never. I'll fight 'till I die Who is your dream date?

JARVIS: Jan Francis (circa 'Just Good Friends') STEVE: Young Diane Keaton NICK: Any decent chick with long hair and a thirst! RUSSELL: Virginia Bottomley CANDIDA: I'm not telling What would you say to Elvis?

JARVIS: "My name's nearly the same as yours." STEVE: "Where can I get a white suit like yours?" NICK: "How did you get out that fucking coffin?" RUSSELL: "I thought you were dead." CANDIDA: "Fucking hell!" What was the last thing you found?

JARVIS: Pair of high-waisters in a skip STEVE: Love & happiness NICK: Marmite sachet RUSSELL: A keyhole in the road CANDIDA: A vegetable money box to put underwear in when washed. A nice lime green colour

Your worst habit?

JARVIS: Prevarication STEVE: Smoking NICK: Nail biting / arse scratching / nose picking / belching / forgetting RUSSELL: Picking nose CANDIDA: Being lazy

Your best attribute?

JARVIS: General aceness STEVE: Kind, generous & patience at all times NICK: Top guy RUSSELL: Funnyness Know a lot about glass CANDIDA: Ooh, being patient What do you wear in bed?

JARVIS: Depends who else is there STEVE: Black leather thong NICK: The duvet RUSSELL: A condom CANDIDA: T-shirt or nowt What is in your pocket?

JARVIS: Fluff STEVE: See above NICK: Marmite sachet, 69p, contact lens case BBC visitor pass, drum key. RUSSELL: A modcon CANDIDA: No pocket, but a purse, change + mascara, keys would be Who would you be stuck in a lift with?

JARVIS: A qualified engineer STEVE: Jason King NICK: Marcel Marceau RUSSELL: An electrician CANDIDA: Oh my God, someone in a worse state than me Why?

JARVIS: For ease of escape STEVE: Discuss his wardrobe & girl technique NICK: Twat the cunt if he says owt! RUSSELL: - CANDIDA: Because it'd calm me down calming them down What do you collect?

JARVIS: Anything going STEVE: Memories... (sic) NICK: Ginsters wrappers (bag offer only) RUSSELL: Glass CANDIDA: Coloured plastic. Beads, sequins, not crap tho

Your worst moment?

JARVIS: Applying pile ointment in BBC lavatories STEVE: Early mornings NICK: Watching helplessly as Jarvis crashes my mini clubman RUSSELL: Vomiting on stage CANDIDA: Plenty. Off hand I'd say not getting to see Arthur Lee or Madonna live Your best moment?

JARVIS: Boating expedition down River Don STEVE: Late nights NICK: Twatting him after (lie) RUSSELL: Vomiting on stage on Nick Banks CANDIDA: Plenty again. Meeting Julian Clary, looking through good kaleidoscopes + mainly good nights out Is thar Owl or is thar Blade?

JARVIS: Owl STEVE: Owl NICK: Definitely Owl RUSSELL: Don't understand CANDIDA: Fuck off thee, Wednesday. Most dangerous thing you ever did?

JARVIS: Ate a yoghurt 3 days after sell by date STEVE: Wheelie on a Tomahawk with eyes closed (ended up in a hospital) NICK: Went to see Wednesday v Millwall - ended up on Millwall Rd. Stoke Newington. RUSSELL: Joined Pulp CANDIDA: Gave my brother razor blades to play with Favourite item of clothing?

JARVIS: Black velvet suit STEVE: Tank tops and stripey jumpers NICK: New corduroy trousers, brown levis, £12.95 RUSSELL: Pendant CANDIDA: Silver skinny rib top, psychedelic shoes, Lycra tights Most impressive party trick?

JARVIS: "Sick-up-on-the-host" STEVE: Climbing back up off the floor NICK: Projectile vomiting RUSSELL: Making silver paper burn your hand CANDIDA: Pete's one legged trick Lifelong ambition?

JARVIS: Personal hot-air balloon STEVE: To find God NICK: Helicopter ride, own flash motor (old), hot air balloon, jetfighter ride, visit Japan plus USA RUSSELL: Play violin in tune CANDIDA: To be a famousish popstar Most treasured possession?

JARVIS: Chunky silver ring - (1st finger right hand) STEVE: In my pocket NICK: Kettle, teabags, pint pot, sugar, milk, etc. RUSSELL: Car (For sale if anyone wants it) CANDIDA: Cats Who would play you in the film of your life?

The awards themselves were mild affair. Lots of suits from record companies stared at Bryan Ferry. (Sitting at a table with his old Roxy Music mucker, Brian Eno.) People toasted the greatness of the music industry, and astounding leaps in telecommunications.

And not very many pop stars showed their faces: both the Manic Street Preachers and Oasis were across the pond, unable to attend, and there was surprisingly little celebrity hanger on action.

Though there were a few live ‘turns’ Underworld and Black Grape didn't play on account of the tricky nature of their life performance. Presenter Richard Jobson – cut out of the BBC coverage - read from an auto cue and didn't make any jokes.

Pulp spent the evening enjoying the bountiful champagne wine on offer and trying to get their mates into the dinner. They didn't think they had a chance of winning, although they weren't saying who they thought would. Shaun Ryder was surrounded by girls wanting his autograph for most of the time, looking rather chuffed with the whole affair. His money, he said, was on Pulp taking home the gong.

Norma Waterson, Select’s favourite Brit-folk chanteuse sat and ate her grub, not fulfilling her ambition to meet Jarvis. He kept nipping around anyway. Brian Eno table-hopped. (Perhaps Bryan Ferry had said something nasty about his nose.) Underworld scoffed, drank lager and cheered their own video.

Finally, after the caviar, or quiche for the vegetarians, the winner was announced. A shiver went down Pulp’s collective spine. They weren't kidding when they went up to receive their award, they gave the money, £25,000 to War Child and tried to fob the award off on someone else.

Jarvis refused to touch it, claiming he'd be doomed if he did. “Everyone goes crap after they've won it,” he said. Guitarist Mark Webber picked it up, and Cocker convinced him he'd been jinxed. In spite of such bad vibery, Island Records had the astounding foresight to book a couple of hotel rooms so that Pulp could have a party into the small hours (Robbie Williams turned up ‘specially).

But Jarvis still didn't know why they were celebrating. Mark Webber agreed: “We've been trying to give the award away all night, then we thought of all the bands we'd like to give it to who should be jinxed,” he said before disappearing into the thick of the booze up.

Transcription by me. More info on PulpWiki