Let's hear it for the boy

It’s a sunny spring morning in Knightsbridge and, despite getting up before most of his pop star mates went to bed, to do a day of international press, Neil Tennant is in tip top form.

“I’m sitting waiting to be asked if I’ve a message for our fans in Finland, what’s my favourite thing about Russia and do I have a pet? The answers being ‘Hello’, ‘The furry hats’ and ‘Yes, a Lakeland Terrier called Kevin, who looks a bit like the dog on Tintin, only smaller.’ You should either give dogs a proper name like Nigel or Norman, or come up with something totally outrageous like Ripper or Fang. Rex and Rover are just shit.”

The campaign for human doggy names starts here. Having seen my first three questions go down the pan, I’m left with no option but to ask the 48-year-old about his rather splendid new album, Release. While there’s no need for Slipknot to start looking to their laurels, it’s the Pet Shop Boys’ most rock ‘n’ roll offering yet and the proud parent of at least six hit singles. As usual, Tennant’s acerbic lyrics take centre stage with Peter Mandelson and Eminem both having their praises sung. Well, sort of.

“What we have to bear in mind is that Eminem is the only person who’s got to number one with a homosexual love song, ‘Stan’,” he chuckles when quizzed about ‘The Night I Fell In Love’. “I’m not for a moment suggesting that he’s gay himself, but he does display enormous interest in the subject! Eminem’s defence for all that stuff about ‘fags’ is that he’s not being him, he’s playing a character. And he’s representing America and what feelings people there have on lots of subjects. I actually think that’s quite a strong argument and I tend to believe him.”

Despite being a fan – “He’s the only major artist of worth to come along in the past few years” – Tennant decided it was time to turn the tables on the rapper.

“I thought it would be interesting to take his method and write something where I’m playing a character,” he explains. “I was imagining a young kid who goes to see Eminem in Manchester, gets a backstage pass and ends up discovering that he’s actually gay.”

As somebody who’s campaigned against homophobia, does Neil think Elton John was right to appear on stage with Eminem?

“Totally. The best way to deal with prejudice – perceived or real – is to meet it head on. Certain aspects of what Eminem does horrify me, others I think are brilliant.”

It’ll be interesting to see what the boy Mathers makes of couplets like, “Next morning we woke/ He couldn’t have been a nicer bloke/ Over breakfast made jokes about Dre and his homies and folks/ Neither of us asked if or when we could see each other again/ But I thought that was cool ‘cause I was already late for school.”

“I’m actually more interested in what Peter Mandelson makes of the second song on the album, ‘I Get Along’, which is about his unceremonious departure from government. I took the mechanics of the story – man in position of supreme power sacks his best friend – and turned it into a love song that could be interpreted as being sung by Tony Blair. I’m not sure about kissing, but they do appear to have made up since, which is nice.”

While I’m not, or never have been, a practising Hello! reader, my showbiz chums were surprised that Tennant didn’t feature in any of Liza Minelli’s wedding photos. Did his invite get lost in the post?

“No, it arrived a few weeks ago but had to be turned down because we were booked to do CD:UK,” he sighs. “We have a more low profile attitude to life than Liza, who neverthless is one of my favourite people. Did you see her recently on Graham Norton? Well, that’s absolutely what she’s like in person. Very warm, very dramatic and very funny.

“Is she the Queen of the Divas? It depends what you mean by ‘diva’. If there’s something of a negative connotation – y’know, being difficult and making preposterous demands – I imagine that Barbra Streisand’s hard to beat. I know us gay men are supposed to love her, but I’ve always found Babs rather chilly and cold. Liza, on the other hand, is everybody’s best friend.

“As for her eccentricities, you’re talking about someone who was in the papers the day after she was born. Her idea of normality was growing up in London and then flitting off to Chelsea where she went to school for a while. She was on stage at the London Palladium by 17, so it’s been a life through performance.”

Tennant is also on intimate terms with the newest member of the Diva Club, Kylie Minogue.

“Don’t you think Kylie’s rather enigmatic? Having floundered somewhat for eight or nine years, she went back to disco and is now not only the darling of the British public, but about to crack America. What most people don’t realise about Kylie is that she genuinely doesn’t give a fuck. For all of her success and general fabulousness, she’s not a career-driven person. Which is probably why she’s doing so well! Unlike her sister Dannii – who, bless, tries ever so hard – she’s not begging for it.

“She’s like Chris (his Pet Shop Boys other half) in that you can phone her up and say, ‘You’re number one in the mid-weeks’, and she’ll go, ‘Am I? That’s nice.’ That sort of thing isn’t as important to her as it would be to Posh or Geri or, let’s be honest here, me!”

Salivated over by Stephen Robinson in the last issue of hotpress, Release benefits enormously from having Johnny Marr play guitar on seven of its 10 tracks. Was that a reaction to the current musical climate – i.e. rock and more rock – or just a happy accident?

“Having decided that he wanted to use real drum samples rather than a machine, Chris astonishingly asked me to play the guitar, which is something I haven’t done with any degree of seriousness since I was 12. I did ok, actually, but when it came to doing the final mixes, we thought ‘Let’s get somebody in who’s a bit more inventive’. It doesn’t have the standard Pet Shop Boys gloss, which will probably please and upset people in equal measures.”

Pop elder statesman that he is, Tennant has plenty to say on the So Solid Crew debate, which was fuelled so spectacularly in hotpress by Fatboy Slim.

“The glamorisation of guns and violence is something I find massively tedious. If So Solid Crew are that desperate to be ghetto fabulous – or whatever it’s called this week – they should go to America where there’s no shortage of gangsta pals for them to play with.

“Pop isn’t in one of its vintage phases at the moment,” he reflects. “I still tragically buy into the Malcolm McLaren ‘sex, style and subversion’ ethos, which rules out 90% of what’s on Top Of The Pops. As for dance, if I see another dad down the disco DJ advertising their mix album, I’ll vomit. What started off as a genuine youth phenomenon has developed into an industry that just wants to flog you another Ibiza party mix. Fuck off!”

Has anything floated the Tennant boat in recent months?

“I love The Hives!” he enthuses. “Everybody regards it as rock, but I think they’re five stylish and good-looking guys who ought to be on the cover of Smash Hits. They definitely would if I was still working there!”

Ah yes, his murky journalistic past.

“Murky? I’ll have you know that despite Nick Kent subsequently taking the credit, I was the first person at the NME to write about the Sex Pistols. Some friends took me to see them at the Nashville in 1976, which was notable for Sid Vicious attacking a hippie with a chain. If you look at that book, The Sex Pistols File, you’ll find it on page three or page four.”

While having a good old mull the other night, it struck me that most of the Pet Shop Boys’ contemporaries – Boy George, Marilyn, Adam Ant, Steve Strange, Pete Burns etc. etc. – have gone completely bonkers. Were Neil and Chris less hedonistic than them, or just better at handling the comedown?

“You say ‘contemporaries’, but we actually came along after New Romantic and, to an extent, burst its bubble. They were all frilly shirts and loads of slap, whereas we were deliberately minimalistic.

“That said, I did meet those people when I was working for Smash Hits and thought they were wonderful copy. The last thing I wrote for them was the infamous Marilyn ‘down the dumper’ interview. He was doing a PA in a New York club, the microphone wouldn’t stop feeding back and the poor lad just lost it. Thirty seconds after going on, he was back in the dressing-room, make-up running down his face ‘cause of the tears and totally inconsolable.

“What brought it all back to me recently was going to see the Boy George musical, Taboo.”

I heard some scurrilous rumours that George, courtesy of the casting couch, has been trying to shag himself.

“(Explodes with laughter). He did say to me, ‘Talk about go fuck yourself! (Dissolves into giggles again). Whatever about alleged romantic involvement, the guy playing George is a brilliant actor and very like him physically.”

Sod it, any message for your fans in Ireland?

“Yes, can you please do something about Westlife? I know they’re a soft target but, God, those lads are taking the piss.”