“It’s like waking up in a parallel universe. There were four reviews this morning – The Independent, The Times, The Guardian and The Sun – and they all loved it. That never happened to The Divine Comedy!”

Neil Hannon and his Duckworth Lewis Method partner Thomas Walsh are celebrating the latest five out of fives for their eponymous album with a pot of tea and fruit scones all round (albeit in Mr. Hannon’s case with all those “yucky sultanas” removed).
Highly appropriate, given that its 12 tracks all address the subject of cricket.
“There’s quite a rich tradition of cricketers drinking too much and taking drugs – Ian Botham and Phil Tufnell being two that readily spring to mind – but there’s still a lot of drinking tea, eating cakes and other activities which to the tie and blazer brigade embody Englishness,” Neil resumes. “I did an interview with Q recently where they went down the ‘cricket is the new rock ‘n’ roll’ route, but it’s not very rock ‘n’ roll in the MCC pavilion at Lords!”
Where himself and Thomas recently had dinner with – cue shameless rock star namedropping – “Sir Tim Rice, Michael Atherton who captained England in a record 54 Test matches, current England spin-bowler Graeme Swann, Christopher Martin-Jenkins who’s the Jimmy Magee of cricket commentary, the Editor and Sports Editor of The Times, the former Chairman of the BBC, Lord Rees-Mogg, Frank Skinner, the screenwriter Ronald Harwood who’s done things like Australia, and Mervyn King, the Head of the Bank of England. Not rock ‘n’ roll perhaps, but bloody surreal!.”
Has anything ever matched that in the weirdness stakes?
“It’s probably on a par with the time I went to a birthday party for Andy Ross, the Food Records boss. All the usual suspects were there including Graham Coxon, who was fulfilling his role at the time by lying in oblivion in the corner, and Damon Albarn who came over, clenched me and… I tell you what, let’s do this as a little one-scene play.
Damon: ‘You’re Britpop, you are!’
Me: ‘Am I really? That’s jolly kind of you, but actually I’m Irish.’
Damon: (thinks about it for a moment) ‘Yeah, but you’re from Northern Ireland, aren’t you? That’s Britain!’
Me: ‘Well, I hate to be a stickler but if you look on the front of your passport it says the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.’
Damon: (thinks about it for another moment) ‘You’re Britpop, alright!’”
Hannon’s got previous when it comes to flights of musical fancy – Father Ted, Doctor Who and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy are three of the unlikelier things you’ll find on his C.V. – but this is the first time Thomas Walsh has ventured beyond his Pugwash guise. How did the collaboration come about?
“The short version,” Walsh proffers, “is that we met at Father Ted creator Graham Linehan’s wedding which I was doing as Pugwash. Neil asked for a lend of a guitar so that he could play ‘The Songs Of Love’. We had a little chat afterwards and, well, there was a spark.”
A frisson, if you will.
“I don’t remember that,” Hannon protests.
Ah, he’s just being coy!
“Anyway,” Thomas continues, “Graham sent a group email out when he lost his mobile phone – a common occurrence! – and half-way down was Neil Hannon’s name. I was doing a charity Christmas single at the time, so I sent him a message asking, ‘Would you be up for doing something on it?’”
“Yes,” Neil nods, “he inbox-stepped me or whatever the hi-tech version of door-stepping is. He dropped a demo of ‘Tinsel & Marzipan’ round to my house, which I absolutely adored, and the next thing you know we were Number 23 in the Irish chart! Actually, I seriously think we should re-release it every year until it gets to number bloody one!”
What they didn’t know at the time is that they shared a dark secret.
“We’re driving back from the studio listening to the radio when the sports report comes on,” Thomas reminisces. “Neil says, ‘You’re probably not into cricket, but would you mind turning it up so I can hear the scores’. My reply being: ‘Mind? You must be joking, I fucking love the game!’”
Were they sporty types at school?
“You wouldn’t think it looking at me now, but I was a pretty decent footballer,” Walsh continues. “Unfortunately, I was knocked down when I was 14 by a robbed car and spent nine months in a full body-cast – I was quadro-spazzed on a life-glug, as Chris Morris would say. That’s when my whole body went arseways. Staying up all night ‘cause I was in the cast and couldn’t sleep also changed my world view vis-à-vis what’s important and what’s not.”
Being a Drimnagh boy, did he get grief for being into something so quintessentially English as cricket?
“No, that ‘I don’t fucking like it because it’s English’ mentality didn’t creep in ‘til later. People thought I was a bit of a weirdo for liking cricket, but they didn’t give me grief over it.”
Full body-casts aside, Thomas’ childhood appears to have been a lot more idyllic than Neil’s.
“First of all, I had to suffer the indignity of going through primary school looking like Donny Osmond,” Neil winces. “To save on haircuts, you either had a skinhead or girl’s hair, with me falling into the latter category. As for sports, I was extremely good at running, which was a prerequisite at the time for living in Derry. Otherwise, I’m not nor have ever been a sportsman. I’ve got good hand-to-eye coordination, but discovered music aged 5 courtesy of Top Of The Pops, and was consumed by it.”
His earliest rock ‘n’ roll memory being?
“‘Under The Moon Of Love’ by Showaddywaddy. The first record I got bought for me was Discovery by ELO, and the first I spent my own money on was Ultravox’s Vienna. My first gig was equally uncool – U2 at Croke Park in 1987 on the Joshua Tree tour. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’d be great in situations like this if I could say it was Kraftwerk or Joy Division. Actually, I should just lie about it!”
Thomas’ turn now…
“The first record I bought was the Electric Light Orchestra EP which had ‘Can’t Get It Out Of My Head’ and ‘Strange Magic’ on it and cost 10p in the Dublin Bazaar. Later, when I was 16, I spent two days sleeping rough in order to see ELO play support to Rod Stewart in Wembley Stadium. Seeing the keyboard-player, Richard Tandy, drive out in a limo still rates as one of the best moments of my life!”
Neil’s equivalent of half-meeting Richard Tandy came in the late ‘90s when he was helping German chanteuse Ute Lemper to assemble her Punishing Kiss album.
“Another of the people on that record was Scott Walker who’d just emerged from his wilderness years with Tilt,” Neil beams. “I basically bribed the engineer to tell me when he was going to be in the mastering suite, and just happened to be outside the door when he came out. I’m not a stalker, honest! I was too busy staring at him to remember anything he said, but the encounter lasted for precisely three-and-a-half minutes, and ended with me clasping the plastic cup I had so tightly that the water in it went all down my leg and on to the floor.
“He was taller than me – who isn’t? – had a baseball cap on and looked brilliant!”
Did Mr. Walker give any indication of knowing who The Divine Comedy was/were (I still can’t get used to these bands who are actually just one person).
“Not at the time, but when my name was mentioned to him by the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, he said – in print – ‘Oh yeah, that little Irish guy who keeps sending me his records. I think he likes my ‘60s stuff better.’ Therefore he must have listened to them! I’ve still got the piece and one day I’ll get round to having it framed.”
As a result of The Duckworth Lewis Method album doing such brisk business in the UK – a top 30 berth followed by a place on the BBC breakfast sofa – Neil has decided to postpone the release of the new Divine Comedy album until the start of 2010.
“To be fair, The Divine Comedy gets put on hold by me having a bath,” he laughs. “‘Shit, we’ve run out of food. I’ll have to go to Tesco’. There’s always some reason for delaying it.”
“I know this is going to sound sycophantic,” Thomas interjects, “but Neil has made what I believe is the album of his career. It’s a pop masterpiece.”
“It’s not finished yet!” Hannon chides. “My symphony needs more work.”
“Well, the rough mixes are great!”
Now children, no squabbling!
While The Divine Comedy and Pugwash have between them played squillions of gigs, The Duckworth Lewis Method have only managed one proper live appearance to date, which just happened to be at the Hot Press Yearbook launch in June.
“We’re buying your love!” Neil chuckles. “There were a lot of first night nerves that had to be dampened down with alcohol, but it ended up being lots of fun. So much so that we’ve just signed up for the Electric Picnic!”
Will their impressive facial hair be coming with them?
“Absolutely. To borrow a phrase from Motorhead, it’s no shaving ‘til Stradbally!”