At home with...Mark Cullen

"I like the tackiest things,” admits Mark Cullen, the Dublin born indie hero behind the success of Pony Club. “Like, you know those paintings with waterfalls in them and they light up and stuff? I love all that. I was in Belgium recently and this guy gave me a transparent toy car that’s filled with this liquid gel. There’s all kinds of them – they look like something you’d get in Blackpool.”

However, as he explains, his penchant for cheap and cheerful ornaments is not one that goes down too well at home. Mark shares his two-bedroom ground floor flat with “mad” dog, Missy, two cats – temperamental Sadie and horizontally challenged Fat Cat (aka Patrick) – and, of course, his beloved wife, who according to Mark, draws a stern line on extraneous clutter.
“She hates all the plastic stuff!” he says. “I have to keep it hoarded away in the wardrobe. Me favourite is this Apollo moon landing craft. But I’m not allowed have it on show. I’m kinda messy, whereas she’s ultra clean. We didn’t realise when we moved in together, but my wife is fascinated with minimalism in its true form. Her theory is that if you don’t need something, there’s no point having it and so it shouldn’t be in the room. I have a studio room with all me equipment in it, but any time anyone comes over I’m made keep the door firmly closed. It’s like two different houses in one.”
The aforesaid studio room boasts a lifetime’s worth of musical-masturbation equipment: Mark has amassed a gargantuan collection of instruments, including 15 guitars and “loads” of old keyboards – “a couple of Moogs, an old Wurlitzer and an old Casio with the drum pads on it”. But the jewel in his crown is a 1967 Fender Bronco guitar.
“There was only about 100 of them made, and I got it for only £300. But they only came in red and that’s why it was only £300 – ’cos mine was green – but me ma’s a French polisher, so she scraped it all back and was able to get down to the wood and, lo and behold, it was red.”
Similarly, Mark’s CD collection is bursting at the seams.
“My CD collection covers my favourite artists, from Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Ian Dury, Bowie, Elvis Costello and The Beatles. There’s a big jazz and blues section with Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, a hip-hop section with Dre and all that… It covers everything ’cos I do a lot of sampling. I’ve even got a pop section with Beyoncé and Kylie – Beyoncé’s the business, she’s got all the best samples. There’s no music that I don’t really have. At the minute I’m listening to Ian Dury’s New Boots And Panties, and I just love it. I heard bits and bobs of it on the radio so I thought I’d better get it. I love discovering stuff.”
Speaking of discovering stuff, Mark has recently acquainted himself with the joys of digital home entertainment.
“I just got a DVD recently, the one down in Dunnes Stores for sixty euro,” he gushes. “It’s deadly; well, it’s working, anyway. It took me a while to realise I had to press enter on the fucking screen because I kept pressing play and nothing was happening. I’m mainly in to the apocalyptic end of the world films like Dawn Of The Dead and The Omega Man and stuff like that. I like people like Mike Leigh and Ken Russell, and I’ve got a lot of Woody Allen films – I just think he’s a fucking genius. But me favourite film of all, and I don’t know why, is Remains Of The Day. Especially if you watch it on a Sunday afternoon with a good pot of tea and some cake. You have to have some nice battenburg when you’re watching a film like that. Jesus I sound like Neil fuckin’ Hannon! What am I like! No, don’t say that. You’ll have to say I like an IV drip while I’m watching a gore-fest with loads of porn. [laughs] Yeah, that’s all I look at.”

[photos: Cathal Dawson]