The cuckoo in Britpop's nest

STEPHEN Jones is an unlikely pop star - older than yer average wannabe, unshaven, slightly sinister looking, and given to writing strange songs about men in tank tops posing for kinky photographs on the bonnets of cars. Whether the cap fits or not, we've made him a star: we've bought the single You're Gorgeous by the bucketload, despite the uncomfortable feeling that it might be a tad masochistic, and we've embraced the band's breakthrough album Ugly Beautiful, lapping up such ambiguous tunes as Candy Girl and Jesus Is My Girlfriend.

"I think they're bound to be seen as bizarre, but I always write songs from a serious subject matter," says Jones in defence of his muse. "I mean, You're Gorgeous has been bought because people think it's a love song, which is fair enough - I shouldn't tell people how to interpret the music or the lyrics. But it also has a serious message to it as well, and I think it's always important that you come from a serious standpoint, then you can use humour to temper that a little bit. Because people don't want things rammed down their throats, whether it's a political issue or a feminist issue or whatever issue you want to use."

So you're trying to get a serious message across, you're not just trying to take the mickey?

"I can understand that people might think I'm being clever clever and possibly taking the piss, but I don't see the point. I love music - it's the thing I can do best. If I can do anything, I can at least write some tunes, so I wouldn't want to take the piss.

Stephen Jones can certainly write some tunes - 400 of them, to be almost exact - so he must either be completely in love with music, or just completely barking mad.

"Probably both!" laughs Stephen. "I mean, my manager and me spent two years trying to get any record company to listen to any of the music, and they just weren't interested because the songs had been recorded on four tracks. I'd written them when I was unemployed or doing other things, and it was the only way to get them out, and people liked them but the music business didn't. So we've kind of proven the music business wrong."

Perhaps, I suggest, the record company moguls shied away from BabyBird because they couldn't find a comfortable slot to put them in. I mean, you are a bit of a cuckoo in the Britpop nest.

"Yeah, definitely," agrees Jones. "I think people still have a problem wanting to know where to put BabyBird. You have a lot of hands which are quite happy to copy other bands, but we're not deliberately trying to avoid being pigeonholed. I just like different styles of music, and that's reflected in Ugly Beautiful and other albums."

Now that he's a bit of a celebrity, Stephen has settled quite comfortably into the social whirl of awards ceremonies, ligs and aftershow parties. Did you always want to be a pop star and hang out with the Noels and pamons and Jarvises of this world?

"No, I never did," insists Stephen. `I honestly didn't. I mean, You're Gorgeous is six years old, and everything I've ever written has been particularly without any intention of releasing it to a public, so it's quite innocent music. I think the pop stardom is a complete shock and a complete surprise. I've got ambitions to be successful, but fame is the kind of thing you have no control over."

But you're going to have to act like a pop star now, aren't you, whether you like it or not?

"No, I really don't have the ego for it. People see us live on stage and think I'm quite arrogant, but that's just putting on a persona. I don't know if I'll get a big ego through BabyBird's success, but I don't have one yet."