James without frontiers

I’m sure it’s better than the swill you get in most Irish coffee shops, but unlike Gordon Ramsay, I don’t think I’d be tempted by a cappuccino made from Alex James’s wife’s breast milk. Not that he remained tempted for long.

“Before Channel 4 would let him give it the F-Word taste test, it had to be pasteurised, checked for hepatitis and HIV and a disclaimer signed so that nobody connected with the show was liable if Gordon dropped dead,” Alex reveals in between mouthfuls of a rather more traditional latte. “We went to all that trouble, only for him to take one sip and spit it out!”
Did he take Ramsey’s record-breaking sprint to the sink personally?
“I just thought, ‘What a waste of perfectly good breast milk,’” he rues. “It’s sweeter, thicker, creamier and tastier than cow’s milk, which figures because if humans didn’t like breast milk we’d be fucked as a race. I probably wouldn’t be as keen on somebody else’s as I am my wife’s, but generally I’m a big fan.”
As we speak, somebody in Starbucks' head office is ordering a feasibility study. Boobalicious beverages aside, the reason James was invited on to The F-Word was to discuss his swapping of a Covent Garden bachelor pad for a 200-acre working farm in the Cotswolds.
“It’s curiously unsatisfying being in a successful rock band and getting everything you want,” he lies. “Researching and making your own cheese, on the other hand, is as big a buzz as any drug I’ve tried. I’ve two – a dripper of a goat’s cheese called Little Wallop and the self-explanatory Pickled Cheese #1 – that I’m planning on entering in September’s Great British Cheese Festival. The competition’s tough, but I’ll be disappointed if we don’t pick up some sort of award."
“I was thinking of setting myself up as a brand expansion consultant – you couldn’t do hair care products with Michael Stipe, but how about a range of herbal teas? And I’d be the first in the supermarket queue for a Bono Banger. If he wants to talk sausages, I’m available.”
As delighted as he is with his very big house in the country – we know a song about that, don’t we children? – Alex is prepared to put rural life on ‘hold’ to facilitate a new Blur album.
“Nothing’s been set in stone, but I think everybody’s coming around to the idea that it might be nice.”
Does “everybody” include Graham Coxon?
“Yes, I think ‘everybody’ does include Graham Coxon who I had lunch with the other day and found to be in excellent form,” Alex divulges. “We’ll do what we’ve always done, which is turn up, plug in and enjoy the ride. Getting the four of us in the same room is hard, but once we’re there magic always occurs.”
Of all the bands that have sprung up in Blur’s three-year absence, I imagine it’s the Arctic Monkeys they’d approve of most.
“That’s not my music!” he harrumphs. “Fuck that, I’d rather listen to Rossini, baby. I can dig it, baby, but it’s not really singing about my life. God knows what the next Blur record’s going to sound like, because there comes a time when a man has to stop wearing trainers and, well, let go. I thought I needed to know what the Sugababes sounded like because I’m a musician, but you don’t.”
Yes, he really did say the word “baby” twice.
Anyone pining for the booze-swilling, cocaine-snorting, model-bonking Alex James of old will be delighted to hear that he’s catalogued all of his youthful misdeeds in Bit Of A Blur: The Autobiography. A high proportion of its pages are set in The Groucho Club where on a typical night you could find: “Moby playing ‘London Calling’ on the piano, Joe Strummer singing and Wayne Sleep, the ballet dancer, turning pirouettes on the bar.”
“I think Bernard Sumner and Keith Allen were there as well,” he chuckles. “You always got the sense at The Groucho of the drugs and the drink taking people more into the world. It was glamorous and aspiring, whereas a place like Filthy McNasty’s (favoured Shane MacGowan and Pete ‘n’ Kate hangout) was just about alcoholism.”
Talking of Messrs. MacGowan and Doherty, was there ever a moment when Alex came close to sticking a needle in his arm?
“No, I don’t think you’d have seen me alive again if I had,” he says switching into serious mode. “The million quid I blew on coke and champagne was excessive enough for this Bournemouth boy.”
A good few thou’ of that was spent in 1992 when Blur badly behaved their way round the UK with The Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and Dinosaur Jr.
“There was a lot of sorrow drowning on that tour,” James winces. “We’d just been fucked over by a manager and owed everybody money, Popscene had been slated by the press and we couldn’t get on radio to save our lives. We were in the shit, which worked in our favour ‘cause we’d go on every night with this ‘Fuck you!’ attitude and kick ass. One of my proudest rock ‘n’ roll achievements is that we were louder on that tour than My Bloody Valentine. They were better at bowling though – especially Bilinda, who has a fabulous right arm.”
How would he sum up the enigma that is Kevin Shields?
“He’s a William Orbit who’s yet to find his Madonna,” he proffers. “A sonic pioneer with his own vision and an obsessive attention to detail that’s part genius, part madness. I love him.”
What does Alex consider to be his own most genius moment?
“Putting together a band that included Joe Strummer, Keith and Lily Allen, Matt Lucas and David Walliams and selling over a million copies of ‘Vindaloo’,” he beams. “That’s very genius!”

Alex James’ Bit Of A Blur: The Autobiography is published by Little, Brown priced €14.99. And jolly good it is too.