Fourteen years after 'West End Girls', the Pet Shop Boys are still selling out arenas around the world. Typically theatrical, their latest show features orange hair, exaggerated eyebrows and a radical set by architect Zaha Hadid. We caught up with them in New York to ask: What's the wig idea?

New York City, early November. The Pet Shop Boys' world tour is coming to  end of its first leg. Having kicked off in Miami and done the rounds of the Sates, it concludes with a couple of nights at Manhattan's Hammerstein  Ballroom which coincide (sic) with the arrival of Elton John. For all his money, he looks down from the second floor balcony with as much delight as the sweating throng below when the Pet Shop Boys launch into a finale of 'Go West'. Only the promotion of Watford to the Premiership can have given him more pleasure all year.

Backstage afterwards, Neil Tennant isn't so much concerned with Elton's thoughts on how the set looked or how the concert went, as with one tiny detail. 'Did you catch my little reference to Geri Halliwell?' he implores excitedly. 'Learn to ignore what the photographer saw', he bursts, putting a circled forefinger and thumb to his eye to recreate Geri's laboured gesture in the video for her debut solo single, 'Look At Me'.

Fourteen years on from their first hit, 'West End Girls', the Pet Shop Boys' most recent album, 'Nightlife' has been one of their most coolly received in Britain. It hasn't stopped the dynamic duo selling an arena this month, but does come as a bit of a blow that more people would rather live Ricky Martin's 'La Vida Loca' than bounce to 'New York City Boy'? Having set off to find out where pop's most articulate artists see themselves as we head into the next century, I have my answer before we've even said hello. They're having the time of their lives.

A band who chose to be pictured sitting down on the cover of their debut album, the Pets never used to be known for much more in the line of passionate expression than a good yawn. A few years on, they finally paraded themselves on stage, albeit buried among and often replaced by a case of dancers. Since then, however, they've moved closer and closer to revealing themselves both on record and in front of their fans. The new album is their most personal and intimate since 1990's acclaimed 'Behaviour' and, despite the presence of four very hairy eyebrows, two orange wigs and one pair of voluminous trousers, the show's stripped-down ambience almost verges on 'rock'... Well, rock by Pet Shop standards.

'Our first show was theatrical mainly because we thought rock shows were boring, 'recalls Tennant, 'And maybe we didn't have the confidence we would be entertaining enough! In the new show I have tried to push myself to communicate with the audience, but there is still something larger than life about it. We do tend to run counter to whatever else is going on and this decade', Tennant pauses and smiles, 'Hasn't been the most *visual* time in music'.

Before images of Oasis swapping Ben Sherman shirts for Pet Shop Boys' orange space helmets (circa 'Very') have time to form, Tennant continues. 'We live in an age when pop culture is very naturalistic; everyone looks the same. I think Pet Shop Boys work in an area of style and design which people find puzzling, because in pop music there's no desire to do anything out of the ordinary'.

The last time I saw Neil Tennant was when he took me on a tour of Noel Coward's London for the 'Twentieth Century Blues' project last year. While his gunslinger Chris likes to lie low between Pet Shop Boys albums (unless his work brings him closer to his beloved Arsenal), Tennant seems to enjoy extra-curricular challenges, dealing with everything from gushing strangers at gigs to putting together a major show with equal grace and an almost parental gentleness. The first time I met the pair was backstage on their first tour. Even then, Tennant had an air of the mother hen about him. He
admonished the dancers for feasting on brownies he suspected had hash in and strove to make conversation with guests, while Chris pulled silly faces in the other direction.

Then, as now, they're music fans before they are pop stars. When I saw them in Italy they were evangelical about local groups from their trail of Europe; backstage here in New York, Chris is on the sofa, just about recovering from last night's clubbing binge at a Studio 54 party held in their honour.

Tennant and Lowe have benefited from being dance savvy. Embracing the most radically evolved musical genre of the past two decades as fans, rather than merely adopting convenient aspects of it, has kept their pop from losing it's fizz. When the duo seek some kind of context, they look to dance music before rock or conventional pop acts.

'There are retro aspects to dance music, though. Big beat, for example. I like *some* big beat,' Neil confesses, 'but there are a lot of old rock reference in it. Ultimately, I'd rather listen to "Led Zeppelin 4".' He laughs and then adds, with a typically reflective
Pet-Shop-Boys-meet-Alan-Bennett tone: 'Actually, that isn't true'.

But if the likes of the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim can be held up as little more than '70s-rock pilferers, what does an act that's been around for two decades have to do to stay fresh? Doesn't it get more difficult to please the public?

'No', refutes Tennant, 'Because we write songs. I don't think anyone else would write "You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk" and I don't think there's other people doing song-based dance music to the extend we do'.

We're talking in their dressing room. The church-organ drenched opening chords of 'It's A Sin' vibrate through the floor from the sound-check downstairs. The night before, it was one of the show's rowdier moments as the set carried the willing audience on wave after waved of emotional highs and lows.

'During this tour so far, we've felt a huge warmth between us and the audience', Tennant continues. 'I think that's because people empathise with our songs. People like what the songs reflect not about us but about themselves. We chose songs which had a theme of overcoming problems, triumphing over pessimism. And I think the presentation of ourselves always as outsiders strengthens that feeling. The odd couple. It seems young people these days do old people's music, like Westlife doing Garth Brooks.
And we do young people's music!'

Sooooo, that makes you the old people...

'Well, I suppose I am 45. But that doesn't mean I want to sound like Garth Brooks! When we started I was 31, so I've never had the problem of having to get over the fact that I'm not youthful any more', laughs Tennant. 'It doesn't mean you can't keep evolving in your image'.

'It's called ageing', Chris Lowe chips in, unexpectedly.

What, wearing orange wigs and big hairy eyebrows?

'Yeah', he expands, 'Wouldn't it be nice if instead of a bus pass at 60, you got orange hair and big eyebrows?'

'Musically, we live in very, very conservative times', continues Tennant. 'I don't think there's been a less adventurous time since before The Beatles. Very few people are prepared to take on visual aesthetics'.

'We had a review in the NME saying, "Oh, no doubt the show will be fantastic". You know, as if it's all very well getting Zaha Hadid to design the stage set and Ian McNeill to design the costumes and Pink Floyd's lighting designer in, to spend a fortune and lose money touring the world with it, but yeah, that's cheating!'

Wandering across Hadid's slab of raw urban landscape, Tennant draws you into the Pet Shop world with subtle, elegant style. Unashamedly greying beneath the comedy wig and eyebrows, Tennant can't help but bring his charming reserve to even the sweatiest gig. While backing singers perform their slick routines, he saves himself for the occasional trademark stroll in time to the music. Somehow it fits the racing programmed beats perfectly.

Seeing this band live is like watching 'It's A Wonderful Life'. You can enjoy it at face value, but the more times you watch it and the older grow, the more poignant it gets. If, like me, you're such a pathetic sot that you start crying as soon as James Stewart's brother falls through the frozen lake in the first five minutes of that Christmas classic, make sure you have the hankies ready for the point in the Pet Shop show when Tennant duets with old footage of Dusty Springfield for 'What Have I Done to Deserve This?'

'We chose to do it because of Dusty dying earlier this year. It was our tribute to her. Our tour manager was saying, "You've got Dusty out on tour at last!" then we lift everyone up for the end of the first set by going out into the night "New York City Boy".'

As vibrant as other Pet Shop Boys classics and easily as catchy, 'New York City Boy' (the second single from the new album) surprisingly failed to be a huge success. 'I don't really know why it wasn't a big hit in Britain', confesses Neil. 'But it didn't get radio play. I guess they thought we weren't hip at the moment', he shrugs, unbothered. 'Which maybe we're not. Dave Morales said we should do a disco anthem, and it was meant to be fun. We did hear murmurs in England people thought it was too gay or too camp!
It was the first time I've ever felt any tremors of homophobia around the Pet Shop Boys in Britain. We've always had something of that here in the States, but here they just think "New York City Boy" is a fun record!

'In Europe and Japan they don't think about it, they just get the vibe and think: Wha-hey!' Tennant pauses and makes another dry, Alan Bennett-style observation. 'And ultimately it is a "Wha-hey!" record. In some ways, Britain is more tolerant now and I think because of that, because being gay is totally accepted now, and because women's rights are in a way accepted, it's seen as somehow allowable to have a go, to be homophobic or to be sexist'.

Tennant isn't too bothered by the fall-out of laddism; statistics claim attendances of museums and galleries are up 65 per cent in Britain this decade, while TV viewing figures are down. Tennant is clearly chuffed. Pet Shop Boys might enjoy a good collaboration with Kylie Minogue once in a while, but even when they are working on something frothy and immediate, there is something sophisticated about it. While most of the pop world is mooching around in casual gear, the Pet Shop Boys are roaming around their
one-off piece of contemporary architecture on a stage near you this very Monday.

Before we know it, we've drifted into a conversation about interior decoration. 'Stripped floorboards are just the new orthodoxy', Neil snaps dismissively, 'Oh God, and stencilling!' they exclaim in unison with an appropriate mix of fear and horror. And, with the realisation that somewhere we have strayed on to subjects better left alone, we decide we've been talking for long enough. Just one last thing: are they happy?

'We've done five shows over the years', reflects Tennant. 'And I think this one is still theatrical whilst also being modern and beautiful to look at. I like the fact we've got to a point of communication between us and audience. We couldn't do it ten years ago. So I think the short answer is . . . Yes'.

After the show that night, a gathering is held for them in the basement bar at the Chelsea hotel. It's crammed full of New Yorkers who would queue for hours in the cold on the scent of the town's latest trendy hang-out. Utterly defeated after two nights in New York, I decide to bow out and head for my hotel. Tennant, on the other hand, is leading a posse of crew and cast through the squeeze, and looks like the night's only just begun. I guess if you can live the lyrics of 'New York City Boy' at 45, who the fuck cares about its chart position?