Ideal home exhibition

We're sitting with the formidable, if unintentional, comedy double act that is Dave Couse and Fergal Bunbury in Dublin's Clarence Hotel, and we are learning that, unlike his calmer companion, Dave is physically incapable of being still in a chair for more than two minutes at a time. His favoured not-sitting-still position involves one diagonally outstretched leg, the arm on the corresponding side crooked at ninety degrees, the hand parked very definitely on the hip: the visual effect is of a superhero ready for takeoff. Such a swashbuckling physical attitude - simultaneously puff-chested with bravado and self-deprecatingly quasi-ridiculous - is perfectly suited, if you think about it, to the ex-frontman of A House, a band at once hilarious and glorious, triumphant and defeatist, nervy and brave - or, to put it differently, a band who had an album entitled On Our Big Fat Merry-Go-Round as well as one called I Am The Greatest.

"I used to love when gigs were over," Dave is confiding in the deadpan, black-comic staccato of the chronically hyperactive. "I usen't to enjoy gigs, at all. Because I am so nervous before a gig, right? And I can crack at any moment. And I never lose the nerves. They stay with me, right throughout the gig. Until the last few songs, where I can kinda go, (breathes out hugely) Okay! This, has been a Good Gig. I've nailed it now. (pounds table; coffee cup jumps in its saucer) Now, I can enjoy the (chortles maniacally) ...last two songs."

If this post-traumatic-gig-disorder logic follows, then Dave Couse must be really enjoying being the architect of Dublin's greatest lost band right about now. Five years after their extinction, A House have painlessly returned to prominence on the pop landscape, having rejigged 1994 single 'Here Come The Good Times‚ for use as the Irish World Cup anthem earlier this year (scoring a Number One and raising eur40,000 for Our Lady's Hospital for Children, Crumlin in the process) - and more recently, having released The Way We Were: The Best Of A House 04.85-02.97, a rather massive, and near-flawless, best-of/rarities collection. Prettily displaying their gift for acerbic, but never cynical, lyrics and transcendent guitar-pop melody, and rammed with great songs to a man, it certainly proves conclusively that as a band, A House can relax now: they did nail it.

"Yeah, I think we did," agrees Fergal (ex-A House guitarist and, this afternoon anyway, ostensibly Dave‚s foil and straight man). "I think we made the best music we possibly could have. All the stuff we had in us, I think we got out. And I would hope, that when people play this," says Fergal, touching the CD on the table between us, "that they get some sense of the joy of makin‚ those records, you know what I mean?"

Finding joy in music for its own sake: a crucial thing for a band to be able to do, who, over twelve years, were on three record labels, one of them twice, and who generally sustained many bumps, scrapes and disappointments on the big fat merry-go-round that is the music industry. Happily, however, Dave and Fergal are, it seems, absolutely bitterness-free. They talk us through the miss parade that was A House's dalliance with the UK and Irish top 40.

"We had five top 50s," says Dave, "and one top 40. Typical. Typical A House style," he sunnily concludes. "We did always feature high in the indie charts though."

Surprisingly, 'Here Come The Good Times' - not famous list song 'Endless Art' - was their only Irish number one.

Dave: "So yes. Our Top Of The Pops history is very chequered."

There is a pause. A joke, you feel, is in the post.

Fergal: (quietly) "It's not even chequered. It's all one colour."

"It's just black!" Dave laughs helplessly.

"It's kinda the opposite of chequered," says Fergal conversationally. "If you can imagine that."

Better still, imagine this. A House may be gone, but Fergal and Dave have written a new album together, Dave is recording with Edwyn Collins in September, and his largest solo gig yet is in the Music Centre later this month.

"I tried a different approach for the first few solo gigs," Dave remembers, cringing slightly. "Sittin' down. Makin' it a bit more laid back. A bit more today, you know?"

"A bit more now," supplies Fergal.

"A bit more now, yes," agrees Dave.

"With a contemporary feel," continues Fergal.

Dave (hooting with laughter): "Yes. I'll sit down, I thought, it'll be a bit more, y'know, relaxed. (adopts very stiff, non-relaxed sitting position; speaks through Alan Partridge rictus) Hi everyone. You know? And that's not me. I think 'me', is that fuckin' shaking nervous person standing in the middle of the stage with a guitar."

That shaking nervous person: we remember him well. Most vividly, from A House]s final gig in the Olympia, one of the most momentous, and completely apt, sendoff gigs in pop history. Afterwards, simply put, the audience refused to go home. They stood, singing, cheering, crying, the house lights long back on, the Olympia cleaners sweeping plastic cups and fag-ends away around them.

What did you lot do after that gig?

Dave: "Cried." (laughs head off)

Fergal: "Got drunk."

Dave considers. "Actually, you know, I didn't."

Fergal: (quietly) "Just got drunk and went home."

"It took me about a year," thinks Dave. "Seriously. I'm like that."

Took you about a year to what?

"To realise the band was finished," says Dave. "And over. And really... It didn't sink in."

Fergal: "He kept goin' to practice and everything."

Dave: (deadpan; sorrowfully) "And no one would turn up. (looks around woefully; wails) I got all these new songs! Where are the band?"

The Way We Were: for those of us also still missing the band, it's an almost perfect consolation prize.