THE BIGGEST PLONKER IN POP?

Well has he? Or is he? And what the hell is this place called Quiff CastIe? And will PETE WYLIE stop talking before the end of the 20th Century? All these and more questions are answered in a saucy, sizzling, over- the-top rm special. Wylie or won't he (put his willy on the table): Nancy Culp. Photography: Patrick Quigly

He's quite possibly the man who jawed the hind log off the donkey, or the one who talked to a paper bag for six hours and came away thinking he'd had a good time. He's quite definitely one of the most entertaining dinner companions anyone is likely to have, even if you do got chronic indigestion from laughing so much.

Pete Wylie, the original mouth on a stick is sitting with me and Josie, once his partner in love as well as in music.

She now plays an important role in the group, singing back-up vocals and generally looking out for Pete, bringing him back down to earth when he needs it. (Which is about once every 10 minutes!)

They're obviously still really close, and Pete describes them as now being "best mates ever". They went out together for three and a half years, and there's still an admirably strong bond between them. Duo to the fountain of verbiage spouting forth from Wylie’s ever-ready mouth, it's very difficult for either of us to go a word in edgeways.

They've just finished work on their new album which, he insists, is going to be called 'Fuck You' ("although they probably won't let us call it that", says Pete), and they've spent the last week doing the video for the new single, 'Diamond Girl'. Pete spends the first half hour moaning about having to stand still for an hour and a half. It’s difficult enough to imaging him standing still for five seconds.

Anyway, seeing that the man is such a great raconteur, it seems a shame to spoil it with me ranting on about him and his art, so let the curtain go up and the Jimmy Tarbuck of pop go on. And on and on and on...

ON BEING OBNOXIOUS

"You see, coming out of Liverpool, as just a Scouser you say things like, 'Yeah, I'm fucking great' and you laugh, and all your mates know you're laughing, and they know you're just another dickhead, and you're suddenly thrust into journalists, who are maybe from a different part of the country and you say things jokingly and they all write them down!

"It got really bad for a while; I'd say something about one of the other Liverpool bands, as a joke 'cos they'd be me mates, and then it's in black and white and they'd think, ‘What's he saying this for?’ It was the same if a band said something about me.

"In fact, that was one of the problems I had to start off with, like with the old record company. I'd go to a meeting where they're like 40 year old middle-aged suntans and say something joking, and it was at the time when 'Boys from the Black’ was out, and they'd all think ‘Yozzer! He's gonna butt us!'. It was like really mad."

ON BEING A HEART THROB

P: "Do I think I'm a heart throb? I dream of it, you know, but I don't think I am."

Josie: "I think he could be if he put his mind to it."

P: "I think I am like an 'eart throb in some respects. People do get keen on me, but I don't plan it. I don't get fan letters any more 'cos' I find it hard to write back to people. So I don't sit round thinking 'I am a heart throb'. I flirt round… Like I'm a big tart, you know. I admit that. I flirt with men I flirt with anyone… I'd flirt with the fucking glass here...."

ON PAST RELATIONSHIPS

NC: Why aren't you and Josie together any more?

P: "Cos we're best mates ever now. We get on better now than we've done for a long time."

J: "It’s true"

P: "It was just right. It's not a thing you can explain. We were mates for, like, five years. I used to be really scared of 'er cos she was, like, so glamourous. We got drunk one night; Simple Minds and China Crisis were playing together and we wore both really drunk, knocking over tables and all that and we ended up together. From the day we met, we were together nearly every day. Neither of us were working except on the band, so we'd wake up together, stay together all day, go out together at night, every day for three and a half years, and that’s hard for anyone."

J: "I think that in three years we got in about 10 years' worth"

P: "That’s it, we did loads of good things together and we still love each other, but we both have different lovers or whatever. We’ve got all the best things about a relationship and don't spoil it with sex."

NC: Do you think that sex spoils a relationship, then?

J: "It can do, like if you really like someone and then you sleep with them"

P: "Also, if you want to put the wellingtons on someone and got them to put a Tesco bag on their 'ead, you don't say it to the girl who's going shopping with you the next day, do you?"

THE NEW ALBUM

P: "Apparently, I've got a really stupid smile, which is why I never smile in photos. Because I come on all hard and 'meaning of life’ and suddenly I go 'ha ha' and everyone goes 'Ooh! it's Cheggers! Isn't he cute?'.

"I just thought calling the album 'Fuck You' was a good way of dealing with things, but it’s got about 15 different titles… and it’s a great album... I love it - (adopts an American accent) "and I liked it so much I bought the company!

"Like with any stuff that I've done, there's been a wide range of stuff and people find it hard. I've always found it hard to work out what I'm trying to achieve 'cos to me it was always natural to mix a lot of influences. This album, I've sorted a lot of that out, I've realised that I've got to be the central chord of it and then to mix the other influences work round me if it’s gonna be a strong identity album.

"You know, sometimes in the past I've erred too much on the side of just making me favourite old records.

"The good thing about being in Liverpool was that club Eric's. Right from the word go, they had cajun bands on from America, they had folk bands, and didn't even segregate them. You just went to the club and they’d play you dub, they'd play you Clash records, they'd play you the Doors, the Velvets and with no-one ever saying, 'Now this is a different night'. That club, it was just the whole history of great music over the last 30 year" All the Liverpool bands tended to grow up with this massive kind of mixture of different influences without even being aware of it. "

ON FUTURE RELATIONSHIPS

NC: Are you a male slut?

P: "The male thing doesn't come into, it. I'm just a slut by any sex standards. I have me standards, you know what I mean? As any good boy should. My standards are ... make sure they bring a gynaecologist with them. You don't want anything dodgy fuming up. I'm the only boy in Liverpool who had a season ticket to the Seamen's Mission which is where we all used to go for VD tests. I used to go and they’d say 'Ow's your record doing this week?'. I used to pretend I had it just so I could hang round in there with the Nicaraguan sailors. I love people, you know. I'm just a child of the universe. Oops, sorry, wrong interview! No, I don't bonk extraordinarily."

NC: Have you ever paid for sex?

P: "I think, in the great David Niven tradition, I actually started me career in sex with a prostitute, but I didn't have to pay her! I opened up new horizons to her!" (His tongue is now lodged firmly in his cheek.)

NC: Do you believe in marriage? As an institution?

P: I should be in one, as they say in the best Dean Martin movies. I don't know ... How do you know? It’s like one of them things, if it happens ... like if the thunderbolt strikes ... I've been hit by the thunderbolt, but I've had rubber plimsolls on to insulate me against them. Or Durex, more to the point! Extra large, probably a bin bag, actually…"

NC: All right, Pete, you've boasted enough, get it out then, on the table!

P: "You'd need a bigger bar than this and I don't want to upset him.." (Pointing at the barman.)

J: No, it’s actually true! Me and him used to kill each other over everything. Me and him used to have an argument over a cornflake but never his willy. That’s the only thing we never argued about."

QUIFF CASTLE

(NB: for the unenlightened, this was the absolutely notorious house Pete once shared in Liverpool with various other local stars about town.)

P: Now there was a place!"

J: It was a den of iniquity!"

P: All the people who lived there were great men, one way or the other. I went back to Liverpool the other week - it was Nasher's wedding - and after the wedding, I went to this pub we all go to. You know, I hadn't been home for two months and I walked in, and in the corner was me five best mates! Gary who's in the Colourfield, Kevin, this guy Tempo, who there's a song about on the album, Boxhead and, like, loads of 'em were there and it was like I hadn't been away.

"I just walked up and it was like I'd gone for a piss and come back to the table. They were all the guys who hung out in Quiff Castle. It was good 'cos each room was like a different movie. On the door, in pink and blue, it had 'Quiff Castle' and the neighbours hated us. All the guys in that house had, like, good quiffs, except for Bollo and he was like Mr Spock.

He used to, like, materialise in the room when there was a great mental arithmetic problem to deal with. One guy, Tempo, could only relate to people through movies. So if he had a row with you, he'd have to think, 'Right, what movie was there a row like this in?' and then do it. He broke his foot once and I ended up smashing his room up like Paul Newman did in 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'.

"Another guy, Kevin, had a foot of moss on his bedroom floor, just' cos he never cleaned it out. There was a whole new David Attenborough series growing on his floor. I just had the room that everyone came into to break the window.

"We all had great reputations in Liverpool and none of it was planned. You can be a superstar in Liverpool without ever stepping out of the door. All of the guys who lived there were stars in their own right."

THAT FRANKIE QUESTION

P: Frankie's dads want me to join, right, Ped's dad at the wedding, after grabbing Josie's tits... 'Cos, right, the dads try and outdo the lads like any dad in any circumstance. Any normal dad, if he sees his son having fun and copping off, he'll try and outdo him. Their dads want me to come and save them from the sin they're falling into but their dads want to be in it.

Their dads think they can get in a band with me so I get in the band, sack the lads and get the dads in, right? That’s one option. Or Holly could have me there to save me from the sin of the lads giving him a hard time ‘cos they obviously tease him."

NC: I hear you were offered a part in 'Phantom Of The Opera'.

P: I got offered to make a record with a West End star, apparently. I never even heard the track. I would've liked to hear what it was. It might have I been a groovy star. It might have been Bonnie Langford! Me and Bonnie doing a duet about the meaning of life! I'm waiting for film parts. You know, 'The Norman Wisdom Story'. If Robert De Niro can put on 16 stone to play Jake La Motto, I can have me legs cut off to play Norman Wisdom! No, I've got a better career than any of them, I think in me own terms, what I'm doing... Some bands would do other things but I wouldn't change what I'm doing."

I'm not sure if that's a relief or a problem, but one thing's for sure: Pete Wylie is never boring!

Record Mirror - 30 August 1986