NT = Neil Tennant
CL = Chris Lowe
RL = Rischard Lowe

NT, "We had decided that we weren't going to drink during interviews"

RL, announces Neil Tennant as pours himself and Chris Lowe another generous glass of wine,

CL, "so there's another resolution out of the window". "We always end up getting a bit drink and being rude about lots of other pop stars,"

RL, sniggers Chris,

NT, "and it's very embarrassing when you meet them. But we're back! We must celebrate!"

RL, The Pet Shop Boys are sitting in a Greek restaurant in Camden Town indulging in two of their favourite pursuits: a) having a dinner, and b) gently poking fun at just about every pop star under the sun (except their pet favourites Madonna and New Order). They've just spent the day polishing off the "cut" of their new LP "Behaviour" and a couple of extra songs called "Miserablism" and "Bet she's not your girlfriend" (which I'll probably end up as B-sides).

NT, "They're good titles aren't they? And there's some good ones on the LP - 'How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously' and 'Being Boring' which is all about not being boring although people are bound to make lots of jokes about that one. We're asking for it really. Especially as it's probably going to be the next single. So can I set the record straight - we're not boring at all."

RL, They're not either. They may not grin from ear to ear in photographs, they may not leap about with joyous abandon when they perform on Top Of The Pops, but the Pet Shop Boys are quite a hoot in real life. Chris is miles friendlier and chirpier than you'd ever expect; and Neil has the sort of voice which makes just about everything he says sound funny.

NT, "But we're not going to bitch about pop stars in this interview, we're going to be nice. Shall we get another bottle in and get on with it."

RL, Yes, let's...

RL, The Pet Shop Boys have been having hits for five years now. Do you worry that people might be getting bored of you?

CL , Well, we keep praying that we're going to go down the dumper but it hasn't happened yet.

NT, We are quite pssimistic people. We always run everything on the assumption that it'll all be over tomorrow. I suppose we do worry a bit but it's not a huge paranoia. It's a boring thing to say this but if you make records that you think are really good it would be very frustrating if they weren't a success. At the end of the day you'd probably think that the public was wrong.

RL, Do you think "the public" ever is wrong?

NT, Yes.

CL, Definitely. When Duran Duran made that record, "Skin Trade

RL, it was the best record they did and it wasn't even a hit.

NT, Well it got to number 15 actually. Not that we follow chart positions of course! Actually I love chart positions. And the only person I've ever met who follows chart positions more than I do is Morrissey. He's obsessed.

CL, I don't like the idea that every time you make a record you're being judged and it's like a competition with all the other records that are out... but the chart is dead good - I like the way fans of groups like cheer their team on up the chart.

RL, A few years ago you talked about replacing yourselves in the group with new people - like the American group Minudo - while you'd carry on writing the songs. Was that a joke?

NT, Well to be honest it wasn't a joke. It was a humorous idea and we kind of thought we might do it.

CL, It was a great idea!

NT, I think New Kids On Th Block should do it actually. That would be good. Get five new people in and start all over again. When you see our promotional schedule it's sometimes very tempting to get other people in to do all the work for us. Once we went to France and, for various reasons, I didn't arrive at the same time as Chris, and Fiona, a girl who works for EMI organising foreign TV, stood in for me at the rehearsal. She could do 'It's a sin' really well including all the gestures and the hand movements and so she did it and the director had no idea that there were anything amiss. We could have got away with it. It's very tempting. But we've been on tour now! We're essentially a live band (this remark, readers, is rather "tongue-in-cheek") - we're a proper group, we can't be replaced.

RL, What do you think of the images that people have of you - that Neil is arty and a bit posh and Chris is a bit grumpy?

NT, Well, I think my stereotype is true but I don't think Chris is very grumpy at all. It's the new you isn't it Chris?

CL, It is a new me. I'm smiling into the '90s - it's a new decade. People always ask me about not smiling in pictures. I think I might have smiled in a few but I think I look a bit stupid when I try and smile. It's a bit false deliberately trying to smile in a picture. I think I've just got one of those grumpy faces - if I'm not smiling I look dead grumpy. Who smiles in photos anyway?

RL, Sonia does...

NT, Not any more. Not for this record - she's now a frowning concept. But I think perhaps we do sometimes look a bit more gloomy than we are. People who meet us are sometimes surprised that we laugh a lot and we never really think of ourselves as being how we look in our pictures.

RL, So you are "arty and posh" then Neil?

NT, Well, I don't think I'm especially posh but I suppose that's reasonably accurate. I went to see a string quartet play in a church on Saturday night. But I think people have a funny images of me - they're sometimes quite shocked by me if they see me when I'm in a bad mood or I'm a bit drunk or something because I've got this holier-than-thou images which is not what I'm like at all.

RL, Is it terribly hard work being a pop star?

CL, Yes it is! You should see our shedule for next week - we've got to do four days of solid interviews on the phone abroad starting from 9:00am and going on all day. I think I might just disappear and not do them actually.

NT, Well pop stars do go on a bit about how hard they work and it's got to be said it's not like being a coal miner or something. And I have done proper jobs before so I am ina position to compare this. Now making a record requires a lot of concentration over a long period of time. But then there are timeswhen you do nothing - you sit in the studio watching MTV and reading magazines. Actually it's very similar to when I worked as a journalist. Long hours - and sometimes you're working incredibly intensely and other times you're just sitting around talking.

CL, It's miles better than being an architect so I've got no complains. But we've worked non-stop since our last single. We've done a tour, a Liza Minelli LP, half of a Dusty LP and our own LP and the thing with Electronic. We are physical and mental wrecks actually and now we've got to try and make ourselves look good to have our pictures taken.

NT, Promotion's the hardest work really and we have this theory actually that we do better where people don't see us. This is based on the fact that last year in Brazil we became EMI's biggest selling act ever - bigger than The Beatles. And we've never been there! And so we think "why go there and spoil it?" Because they probably have this vision of the Pet Shop Boys as this weird duo from England where it rains and it's foggy all the time and everyone's very interesting and mysterious and then you come over and it's just boring old us.

RL, Do you think you get too much money for what you do?

CL, I don't want to think about that sort of thing. I'm funny about money.

NT, I think it's just one of those jobs where you do get a lot of money if you're successful. We didn't start out as a pop group to get rich but it has made us rich.

RL, Are you millionaires?

NT, Oh I hate these types of questions. But yes we are.

RL, Do you get pestered all the time by fans?

NT, I've had people sitting on my doorstep revising for their 0-Levels! Typical Pet Shop Boys fans - there they are sitting with bundles of revision notes. And I get sent faxes, would you believe! And I have people stealing my rubbish which I'm not very happy about. So I havce to put my rubbish out the day they collect it. And the time I had it stolen was when I'd thrown all my Christmas cards out.

CL, You throw yor Christmas cards out! After all the thought that's gone into them? I keep all mine - I've got decades of them.

RL, Do you live in incredibly posh houses now?

NT, I live in a flat - what I did was bought two flats and knocked them together to make one big one. It's very gothic inside - I have Victorian gothic revival furniture, about 100 years old. Antique furniture like that doesn't really cost a lot more than the sort of furniture you see in furniture shops. I like antiques - I'm interested in them but I don't know much about them really. We were talking about money before and what it does mean more than anything else is that you can afford to live the way you've always wanted to live and I've always liked old things, so I buy the furniture and I buy old Victorian paintings.

CL, Well, I'm the complete opposite to Neil. When I first got my flat I wanted it to look a modern art gallery - white walls and a wooden floor and I got a few pieces of modern art to go with that. It's dead simple really and it's comfortable. Neil's is so uncomfortable - he's got all this furniture but there's not one comfortable sofa or chair in the entire house so I spend my whole time standing up when I'm round there.

NT, And Chris is never sure whether you're allowed to sit on the chairs. It's a bit like a museum - in fact when I had it decorated I tried to make it look like a museum.

CL, He even keeps his records in a cupboard so they don't look out of place and he's had these speaker cases made in a gothic style. He's gone that far. I can't stand Victorian architecture, design, paintings - the whole lot. I hate the whole Victorian thing.

NT, Well I quite like Chris's flat actually. I like a lot of things.

CL, And I dislike a lot odd things.

NT, Yes, that's the difference between us. Chris is a great hater and I'm the sort of person who tends to quite like a lot of things.

RL, Have you got an expensive car?

NT, Well I don't have a car. I don't drive, but I think you should ask Chris about this one.

CL, Well yes I do have an expensive car - it's my one indulgence. I'm not telling you what it is because it's too embarrassing.

NT, (laughing at Chris's obvious embarrassment) Chris, you love that car, you're actually in love with that car.

CL, I love the design of it, the attention to detail, everything about it. But it's a yuppie car and normally the people who buy them are horrible people. It's a Porsche. I had to buy it despite all the associations it has and I do have to suffer a bit of shame every time I drive it.

NT, Not to mention months of grief from me.

RL, Who are your best friends?

NT, I have my Newcastle friends who I've know since I was 15 and I've got friends who are teachers, actors, journalists. Most of my friends I've known since before we were a pop group.

CL, Well I still have friends from Blackpool and friends from when I was at university, but I don't see them very often. And I have close friends in London - a group of friends who I go to clubs with, go to parties with, go to football with and they're not part of the music business and they don't think anything of the fact that I'm a Pet Shop Boy.

RL, Where did you go for your summer holidays?

CL, I went to Blackpool and Manchester. I quite fancied going to Ibiza but I hate flying and to get there you have to go on these really dodgy flights and I didn't fancy that, so I went to Blackpool instead. I love going to Blackpool - when I used to work on the Pleasure Beach there I used to go on the Revolution every day - it's really good. And I love Manchester - we've got friends there now since we worked with Electronic - and I love going up there. And of course we invented the whole Manchester thing: Blackpool is in Greater Manchester so we invented it (this is the Pet Shop Boys latest "joke" - that they invented the so- called "Manchester scene").

NT, Well I had an incredibly posh ten days in the South of France because I'm so posh. I always thought the South of France was meant to be incredibly glamorous but it's a real hole. I had a very nice time - it's an interesting mixture of tackiness and wealth.

RL, What was the last record you bought?

NT, Well the George Michael LP of course which I bought the day it came out - I don't mess about.

CL, "Humba Humba" by Voice Of Africa which we first heard in a club in Barcelona and which is great good. I listen to house music - all night long.

NT, At home I listen mainly to classical music although I do listen some pop records. I do love pop music and I hear all the new records that come out and I read reviews and buy records that sound interesting from the review or that people have told me are good.

CL, I'm sorry, I'm a raver.

NT, Chris is a raver and I'm not really. I've never been in a field at four o'clock in the morning... raving. But I went to our rave. We had a rave for Chris's birthday and everyone tells me that was the best rave so I feel I've been there and done that.

CL, But I wasn't in a field so it soesn't count.

RL, Are you worried that someone's going to impersonate you on Stars In Their Eyes?

NT, Raw Sex have already done it on the French and Saunders show which was funny.

CL, Stars In Their Eyes is brilliant, by far the best programme on TV. I missed the Marti Pellow one though which I think would be the best. But you should see Johnny Marr's (used to be in The Smiths and is now a part of Electronic) impersonation of Marti Pellow.

NT, It's so good. I think he could go on tour with them and no-one would notice! He's got the walk, the smile, the way his neck moves. And he does Depeche Mode. And me, actually, but I've never seen that. He could make a good living out of being an impersonator. And Johnny Marr, it's got to be said, is more obsessed with pop music than even I am. When we did the Electronic shows in Los Angeles he was saying to me after the first nigh, "Oh we're getting so used to this we'll just be strolling across the stage soon chatting to each other about ancient pop records". Second night I kind of wander across the stage during the drum beat in "Getting Away With It" and Johnny Marr comes over, playing away at his guitar and says "What was Picketywitch's first hit?" It was dead funny.

RL, So you're big pals with Electronic now?

NT, We're pop pals! It's funny, it's like people thinking we're a bit dour - because Johnny Marr was in The Smiths and Bernard's in New Order people imagine thay're very serious but they're both really, really funny. We have such a laugh with them.

CL, Even though they're supposed to be gloomy, dour Northerners and so are we!

NT, Well the Pet Shop Boys are not gloomy and we're not dour...

CL, And our LP is full of really good pop songs...

NT, With interesting lyrics...

CL, And lots of interesting electronic bits...

NT, And that's it really...

RL, Indeed!

Interview by Rischard Lowe