I didn't grow it to hide anything, I grew it out of neglect. I was at somebody's house and I had no access to shaving facilities for a couple of weeks. I got over the itchy bit, and I thought I'd give it a go. I was horrified to see that it had quite a lot of grey in it. But then you have to get used to the fact that you're getting to a certain age. I've had it for two and a bit years now.

Starting Pulp was a way too of alchemically transforming everyday existence into a more fantastic version. Several times in our conversation he touches on his persistent desire to live inside the TV, a zone of adventure populated by dinosaurs, Daleks and the Monkees. “I realise that image doesn’t work so much now because TVs are just flat screens. But when they were boxes you kind of thought – what’s in it? You could almost imagine fitting inside it.” I have written a book called Good Pop, Bad Pop, which is based around the objects I found in the loft of a house I used to live in. Objects I collected over the course of a lifetime & then left to gather dust in the dark. Why? Am I a hoarder? Or did I think I was laying things away “for a rainy day”? When we came to do the shows, a lot of people seemed to think it was very important that I got rid of the beard. There were forum discussions. I thought about it, but I did have a slight fear that I may have developed a double chin in the interim. There could be a jowl under there. So the answer to that question is that I don't think I'm hiding anything. The unfortunate side effect is [the authorities]can then bring in all these draconian things, like when there was a student march the other week. They let slip: "Oh, yeah – we might have some rubber bullets" or "We might get the water cannon out." When there is something that actually has an agenda, not just "Oh, I want some trainers", that's going to get stamped on. I went on that march and I was amazed, because there were as many police as there were people marching. It was crazy.In the book he describes trying to provide some kind of sex education for his own adolescent son, to the mortification of both parties. It worries him, the fact that sex and life have become so severed. “Because what you’re dealing with is you get those feelings, those instincts, at a certain age and they are strong feelings and you’ve got to deal with them in some way and if there are no clues except some kind of foul thing online where you start to think of people as objects, and why aren’t I getting my sex that I was promised – or whatever, I don’t know what those people think.”

In the UK, suddenly, I was crazily recognised, and I couldn’t go out any more. It tipped me into a level of celebrity I couldn’t ever have known existed and wasn’t equipped for. It had a massive, generally detrimental effect on my mental health,” he told The New York Times last July. JD: Rave in its widest sense infuses everything you do. Is that spirit of rave important to your work? It's been yet another good year for Jarvis, what with the Pulp gigs, the launch of his book of lyrics, Mother, Brother, Lover, and the continued success of his 6Music show. Not that you'd know it: good year or bad year, Jarvis himself doesn't really seem to change. He's still thoughtful, still funny, still more low-key than you might think. He still comes out with answers that you don't quite expect. T-shirts are the fun tokens that pay for everything we do. They come from the bottom, from the rave, and travel upwards. When I got my first studio on Seven Sisters Road, the previous tenants had just been shut down by SO15 counter-terrorist squad. I signed the contract flanked by portraits of Che Guevara and Tito. There was a brothel on the next floor, so it was quite awkward with people pressing the buzzer marked “BANGER”.

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How did he navigate it, the forcible switch from observer to observed? “I don’t know if I did navigate it. Fame in our times has taken the place of heaven in past belief systems. You think that your life’s a bit drab or it’s not really working, but if you’re famous you’d be at the front of the queue, you’d be at the best table, all this kind of paradise. So to experience this thing that’s got this weird belief system around it – and also this belief system you’ve constructed yourself – it’s never going to be what you thought. I didn’t end up in the telly.” He pauses to consider. “To turn your nose up at it doesn’t seem right because you do want people to engage with what you’re doing. But it’s the other bits. It’s the being observed part that wasn’t so good. I prefer to be furtive.” Speaking of fashion, Jarvis also recounts the time some German family members sent him lederhosen as a gift. "I looked like an Alpine goatherd. But my mum thought it would be fine to go to school looking like this." As you can imagine, much schoolyard ribbing ensued. This was exacerbated when two zips were spotted on the front of the garment. Soon Jarvis was not only known as 'four eyes' but also 'two...' [something too rude to write here]. "I've only had one fist fight in my entire life" What was the last song you heard that made you think, "Wow. What's that song called?" (JonnyMac99, online)

From doing work experience at a record shop in Colchester I saw from the older kids how to build my escape route: college, get a student loan, go to uni. I did a music production HND at Sussex uni. I didn’t finish, but I put on my own parties in Brighton, started a record label and worked in pirate radio. That’s where the name Jonny Banger comes from. Jeremy Deller: I think that’s what being an artist or a musician is: trying to make sense of things around you that you’re not happy about or that confuse you. You make art or music to deal with it, which is a very similar impulse. I grew up in Colchester. My mum was a psychiatric nurse and she got ill with leukaemia when I was 13 and died when I was 15. Then it was just me and my brother in the house. He was 18 and became my guardian. We get told stuff like, "You don't understand this thing, so just keep out of it." Well, for a start, we can't keep out of it, because we've had to bail everything out in the first place. I think it's good that people are saying that the system we're supposedly messing up is supposed to actually work for us as well, and it doesn't. And they think we've been through a boom? It weren't that good, were it? I don't think normal people really felt like, "Yeah, wow, I was there. We were lighting cigars with fivers." It's like, "Wow, I missed that one." Yes, I say, they talk about the right to sex. “No, that’s a horrible thing. But for me, that couldn’t happen because of being brought up in a very feminine environment. So when I started to feel … urges, because I’d been brought up in a very female-dominated environment, there was no way I was going to start thinking of women as objects.” The only interesting thing about my dad is that he just wasn’t there

JC: That feeling is what makes things, especially activism, fun. You don’t want to walk around with a serious face, and it confuses people if you’ve having a laugh. Well, no – because often the names will get changed. But I have had issues with people. One girlfriend used to punch me. I could see her point, because I do tend to be a bit closed off emotionally. You know when you get into that thing where people want to discuss the relationship? I'd rather discuss what was on telly, avoid the issue, discuss anything other than the relationship. And so this girl, quite rightly, found it a bit much that when she came to concerts you would get all this emotion splurged out on the stage. Her phrase was, "The only time I find out what's on your mind is if I come to one of your concerts." All I can say in my defence is that I wasn't really doing it in a snidey way. If you paid with a debit or credit card please be advised that this can take 3-5 working days to show on your account.