IF you believe the indie music comics, members of Keane spend their time organising hunts on their massive estates while members of The Libertines are all falling in and out of dingy crackhouses in the East End of London.

The two bands met up a while back, though, and got on famously, with Tim Rice-Oxley being reported as saying afterwards: "I think we show more guts and honesty by being ourselves. One in 10 bands you meet are probably middle class kids who got into music for the same reasons we did. Some people lie and say they grew up on a rough estate when they didn't. And the white, middle-class media buys it.

"A band like The Libertines are no rougher in terms of background than we are. Me and Tom went out in Japan with Carl and Gary from The Libertines. People who read the music press wouldn't believe that could be true. But it is. They're very nice people who weren't smoking crack."

Asked to verify the story, he now says he "can't remember". Good call. He probably doesn't want to be associated with the nice, middle-class, non-crack smoking Libertines.