"No, I'm Neil, He's Chris

 "The Pet Shop Boys are taking their glitztacular, ineffably poignant pop revue to a hard-hearted world.  In America, this means wearing the 'spare wigs', offering sexual advice to the women of Modesto, and not being ironic.  'Shame is our biggest fear,' they tell John Aizlewood.

 'I was a 15-year-old virgin when I was raped and given herpes.  Now I've met a guy, but I'm scared to have sex in case I pass the herpes on.  This is the first time I've talked about it.  I'm scared...'

 This is difficult for Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant.  He looks at the floor, sucks his cheeks in and softly comforts Lisa, aged 20, from Modesto, California: 'That's very rough'.

 We are in a Los Angeles television studio.  Tennant is appearing on MTV's Loveline, where viewers air sexual difficulties to a pop star, a doctor, a Pete Sampras clone and a blonde hostess.  Stephanie (18, San Diego) likes to be dominated by older men; Dominique's (27, Wilmington) boyfriend can only manage an erection if she dresses like a prostitute; while Sherry's (27, Carrollton) husband's penis is 11 inches long but he cannot ejaculate.  Only Lisa weeps however, particularly after Samprasman chimes, 'We'll get right back to raping and herpes after the Pet Shop Boys video.'  Wisely, Tennant had ensured there was no possibility of the programme reaching Europe.

 Drained, Tennant fancies a hot dog.  We settle on Cajun and he waxes nostalgically over Genesis, whom he interviewed on his first trip to America.

 There are strange times for Pet Shop Boys.  Bluntly, they are not as popular as they were.

 'The turning point was Domino Dancing,' shrugs Tennant.  'Widely regarded as a Number 1, it entered at 7.  I make the comparison with Queen who were always expected to sound like Bohemian Rhapsody.  Their funk album Hot Space wasn't so successful, so they came back with Radio Ga-Ga.  We have to sound like It's A
 Sin or Always On My Mind.  I find that stifling.

 'We're about songs, but we start with the musical idea: Introspective whittled remixes down to a seven-inch format; Behaviour used original synth sounds, not samples; Very was megapop; Bilingual was a Latin reaction to Britpop; Please was anti-Thatcher and Nightlife merges synths and strings.  I don't believe in trying to hit the zeitgeist.  Pet Shop Boys is a hermetically sealed world.'

 'We always think we're right,' adds Chris Lowe.  'If this album doesn't sell, we'll think the public are wrong and it's their fault.'

 For the first time, they are touring to support an album.  The gorgeous Nightlife has banished the doldrums of the unpleasant Absolutely Fabulous single ('Well I like it, it's meant to be funny, it's our biggest hit in Australia,' sniffs Tennant) and the cold, clinical Bilingual ('One of our warmest actually, but we sequenced it wrongly,' muses Tennant), their worst selling (1.5 million) proper album.

 Might Pet Shop Boys have run their course?  'Absolutely not, never,' emphasizes Tennant.  'Look.....'  He unfurls his Psion Organizer, packed with lyrics to new songs.  There's Hey Tito (Latin sadly, rather than Marshal Josip), Telegraph Boy (telegram deliverers supplementing income as rent boys) and London, as visited by two Russians in order to perpetrate credit card fraud.

 Two days before Loveline, they found themselves in Las Vegas celebrating Halloween by playing the 1,850 capacity The Joint at $38 a head.  Next week Queensryche will charge $77 and Danzig an unsatanic $20.  The Joint is part of a Hard Rock complex, so there are 44 guitars attached to the walls, 43 more than Pet Shop Boys use.

 America takes Halloween seriously, so the crowd are drunk and in fancy dress (The Devil, Devo's flowerpot period, witches from a particularly wide-arsed coven).  Atop a set designed by maverick Iranian architect Zaha Hadid, Pet Shop Boys are augmented by off-stage percussion and keyboards (They said we couldn't tour America without a drummer,' chuckles Tennant, 'Chris immediately said, No musicians on stage', and five very much on-stage singing dancers.

 After descending into the crowd during Being Boring, Tennant lets them sing Always On My Mind.  'At that moment,' he explains, 'I was thinking that this guy I used to go out with could listen to me singing this song and think, 'Well, quite'.  It's about someone who's a tactless twat and I've often felt that about myself.  I don't need reassurance in a relationship, but a lot of people do.'

 The crowd happily totters to the hotel casino, Pet Shop Boys to a dressing room where the supply of M&M's is unlimited.  Later, much later, there is a crammed, jaw shatteringly loud party in the bowels of the Hard Rock.  Tennant will stay for under a minute.  In his ideal world, Lowe would be there now, jiggling on the dancefloor.

 A few hours on, a jolly Neil Francis Tennant, one of life's Francises, is aboard what Jon Bon Jovi calls a steel horse (i.e.. a luxury tour bus), nursing a tiny shaving cut - 'I'm pouring with blood' - for the 275-mile haul across the Mojave desert to Los Angeles.  Christopher Sean Lowe, one of life's Seans, has elected to fly.

 Tennant demands we stop at Bun Boy Country.  This, it transpires, is a restaurant.  One plate of zucchini sticks and one Waistliner - 'turkey patty cooked to perfection' - later, we're driven into the 6,350 capacity Universal Amphitheatre, where The Pope, Sting and Neil Diamond have performed sell-out shows.  It is also the home of the world's largest thermometer.

 Here, the crowd are what Tennant, one-time Turner Prize judge ('Not that I'm little Miss Modern Art') refers to as Petheads.  The show blossoms and there are magical moments.  Tennant forces a reluctant Lowe to mutter 'Hello everyone'.  The dancers, dressed as On The Town sailors, salute Lowe during New York City Boy (a song which Tennant doesn't regard as especially gay: 'it's a disco celebration, but The Lottery Show - presented by Dale Winton - said it was too camp').  The ever smiling Tennant cuddles a stage invader.  And there is Tennant's acoustic on the lonesome You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk ('One of our most perfect records,' sighs Tennant.  'Fresh, funny, sad, true, a lovely melody and string arrangement.  There's a fantastic amount of truth in it').

 Best comes last.  The four male singer/dancers ('all straight, like Take That,' notes Tennant, 'but one of pop's functions is for the audience to speculate whether the artist is gay') don hard hats for Go West, but there's no kitsch.  The Village People song, written about San Francisco, is a moment frozen in time, the instant before AIDS made the gay community scared again.  Now, it's a lament for all that's happened since, for the friends who aren't around any more.  And when Sylvia Mason-James belts her heart out alongside Tennant, it is desperately moving.  Maybe it's time for Tennant and Lowe to come out.  They've never actually been ironic.

 'People think we're taking the piss,' laments Tennant, who had heterosexual sex in his twenties, but hasn't dabbled since those youthful indiscretions.  He used to be afraid of the dark, too.  'It bugs me, as does the perception that I think I'm intellectual, clever and pompous.'

 'Where The Streets Have No Name made the point that when you strip its mythology, it's a pop song.  What's ironic about West End Girls?  Love Comes Quickly is heartbreaking.  Rent is about a man and a prostitute.  I write about areas of relationships which don't function and set this unidealised view of life against romantic, dramatic music.  My voice has a plaintive quality, I hear it as being rather affecting and, when it's good, beautiful.'

 'There's passion in the music,' agrees Lowe.  'It's all genuine'.

 Afterwards, this being Los Angeles, it's grip 'n' grin time.  Tennant is excellent, Lowe so hopeless (trusty opening gambit: 'I took a valium last night') that Tennant's hackles rise ('Two fucking questions, ask everyone two fucking questions').  They have photographs taken with all (and probably sundry too), including some dyed blonde Coronation Street actress on a Hello! shoot.

 Champagne in hand, Tennant grips, grins and puts his arms around anyone ('Neil, this is the art director of Record & Radio magazine...').  Lowe folds his arms and has to go for a lie down and some M&M's afterward.

 'Chris,' purrs Tennant, 'is Pet Shop Boys' ideaological backbone.'

 Still retaining a Blackpool accent (but, strangely, an Arsenal season ticket), Lowe is a boxing buff, yet so scared to return his wrong sized trainers to a Beverly Hills shop that he begs his sister Vicki to do it for him.  Whereas Tennant knows every Pet Shop Boys chart position, Lowe can (and does) describe classic Sunset Strip Pet Shop Boys billboards.  He says 'hmmm, right' when he means 'you're hopelessly wrong'.

 'Egos drive me insane,' he mutters darkly.  'I can't stand egos [comedy pause] except for mine and Neil's.'  He looks younger than his 40 years when he laughs.

 'Shame is my biggest fear, pushing doors you're supposed to pull.  I find adulation embarrassing, which means I'm often uncomfortable.  I never dreamed of being a pop star.  Neil did: if I'd not met him, I wouldn't have done this.  I never thought I'd come to America: first time, I was so happy I couldn't sleep for two nights before.'

 Happy now, Chris?

 'That's a difficult one.  I don't want to get into that actually, but if I wasn't happy being a Pet Shop Boy I couldn't carry on.'

 After Tennant's solo Loveline trauma, Pet Shop Boys reunite, hop aboard a Hummer (half stretch limousine, half tank) and drive to Tower Records, Sunset Strip for a signing.  A silly woman from the American label has already floated the idea of getting the police to shut the event down - as recently happened with Ricky Martin - for publicity purposes.  Whereas Martin meant 10,000 hysterical Hispanic girls and their armed boyfriends, Pet Shop Boys merely attract a flow of polite, decent people.

 Dressed in Nightlife fright wigs (when Lowe's droops, he's Sideshow Bob from The Simpsons) and sunglasses, they look great, although underneath Tennant is bedenimed, while Lowe displays knobbly knees and short, school uniform socks.

 The event's star is the Lionel Blair-esque Richard Blade, once of Torquay, but now the Chris Evans (for whom Pet Shop Boys refused to arm wrestle on television) of Los Angeles.  He's with his entourage, but splits the evening between autographs and taking every punter's camera to photograph them with Pet Shop Boys.  Lovely man.

 Lowe and Tennant stay well over their allotted two hours, signing everything, kissing babies and accepting gifts (Tennant checks a wine's vintage, then offers thanks).  They meet Ukrainian cabbie Igor; someone with a Visage patch; and a man so stupid he wants autographs over the actual vinyl of a pressing of West End Girls so rare even Lowe doesn't own one.  The pair refuse.

 Whenever Absolutely Fabulous appears, they wave it at Q: 'See!  They like it!'  Sadly, they only have the opportunity to do this twice.  As the queue thins, Lowe barks 'No chatting!  We've got dinner to get to.'  Then he delays every last fan with his own chatting.  Pet Shop Boys depart Tower with their dignity intact, as they've departed almost everything with their dignity intact.

 'Yes,' smiles Tennant, a little sadly, 'the dignity of clowns.'"