wears the trousers magazine

interrupting yr broadcast: the hot puppies
originally published on our old website in July 2006

With stamps of approval firmly in place from everyone from the Observer Music Monthly to the NME, Drowned In Sound and (crikey!) Vogue magazine, these glamorous indie pop chameleons have the potential to make it big in 2006. We caught up with their lead singer Becky Newman earlier this month for a wee chat. Rod Thomas and Alan Pedder rushed off an email full of silly questions and it went a little something like this…

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You’re Welsh (yay!) and there does seem to be a number of Welsh artists creeping into the mainstream at the moment. Do you think there might be a repeat of the late ’90s Welsh mega-success á la Catatonia / Manics?
There could be, there does seem to be a proliferation of decent bands at the moment.

Charlotte Church: yay or nay?
The girl has spirit.

Your last single, ‘The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful’, took the form of a problem page letter to Mariella Frostrup. What inspired that? Did you ever write to a real-life problem page as a kid?
A love and respect for the country’s finest broadcaster and agony aunt and no, I didn’t write to a real-life problem page…although I probably wouldn’t tell you if I had done! I did write to ‘Jim’ll Fix It’, though.

Has Mariella been in touch?
Yes, she made a cameo appearance in the video for the song. You can see her face in the clouds.

Another cited influence for the song was the Hitchcock film ‘Vertigo’. Have any of the band had a stalker/crazed fan? seen a ghost? been deathly scared of heights?
I’ve been stalked by a fan who got hold of my telephone number and wanted to send a car to pick me up and take me to him. Bert has seen a ghost. Luke has vertigo.

Have you ever gone to ridiculous lengths to meet one of your idols? Who would you stop at (almost) nothing to spend a day with?
Most of my idols are dead. I don’t have any immediate plans to get any of them exhumed or to take part in a séance. I did for a while have a recurring dream about a series of dates with Jarvis Cocker. He took me to a cinema; we went bowling and he was charming.

Who would win in a celebrity deathmatch between Dame Shirley Bassey and Sir Tom Jones, and how would they finish off their opponent?
They would both die simultaneously in a frenzy of mutual masturbation.

You’ve been touring all over the place lately, how has it all gone? Anyone get hideously drunk and do something embarrassing?
They’ve gone amazingly and we’ve met lots of new people, and had lots of fun. We all got hideously drunk most nights, and definitely won’t share our antics with you. Although there is lots of video footage to implicate us and quite a few other bands…

As a new band working hard, what’s been your biggest struggle so far?
The other night Ben had a bit of trouble uncorking his second bottle of Dom Perignon, nothing else really springs to mind.

Now that you’ve been signed to Fierce Panda and the battle for a deal is out of the way, what are your long-term plans?
To have some more fun…more touring…more albums…a musical (the old-fashioned genre) and hopefully some trips abroad? More dancing and drinking!

Finally, what can we expect from your debut album?
Thirteen songs about love that will make you want to dance.

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Rod Thomas and Alan Pedder
originally published July 2006; stored in The British Library/The Women’s Library digital archive collection (here).

early Hot Puppies live footage

‘The Girl Who Was Too Beautiful’