Neil  This title was in my notebook for years. I think it came from the Yorkie chocolate bar advert which said something like 'big enough for the truck-driver and his mate'. It was Chris's idea to do a rock track.

Chris The music was a complete rip-off of Oasis. 'Some Might Say', possibly. That's where it started, anyway.

Neil  It's an incredibly standard rock chord change.

Chris We were excited by Oasis, by the return of rock. It doesn't really sound like a rock record, though. I don't know what we were thinking. It was always a b-side.

Neil  It was done at Rocky Lane. It was just a fun thing to do. We used a sample of a rock guitar chord. Then the 'ow-wow-wow bit is very Rex. I'm playing acoustic guitar. It's glam rock really. It's like a David Bowie kind of lyric. 'Solemn as an act of fate'. Is that an original phrase? Who knows? It's a song about male-bonding. There's something homo-erotic a bout the phrase 'the truck-driver and his mate'. I just imagine the two of them dancing together in the moonlight; there was something slightly romantic about it.

Chris In the serious moonlight?

Neil  Yeah. The serious moonlight. There were promo twelve-inch copies of this which now sell for a lot of money. When it was released as the b-side of 'Before', it started getting played in India clubs like Pop stars in London, so EMI decided to do some promos of just this track. For the 'Before' promos, we'd had a limp penis with the word 'Before' under it. It was just a joke. Before arousal. In America the record company liked itso much they wanted to release it with that sleeve, which we were horrified at the thought of, because we're secretly very prudish. Anyway, for 'The truck-driver and his mate' promo, we just repeated the penis twice, one next to the other.