TOTP: Seeing as we have this brilliant pun about your name, could you oblige us by saying you're a big TV watcher?
Jon: Erm, sometimes. There's not that much on though.

TOTP: What would you never miss, then?
Jon: Oh, the Sopranos. It's almost like having a Shakespeare play played out in some gangsters' lair, it's weird. Nothing else touches it, man. The acting is bloody good, the stories are bloody good. It's great. From the pilot, years ago, I was just hooked. I don't really follow TV programmes, but that's the one thing I watch religiously.

TOTP: Do you watch it on tour?
Jon: Yeah, me and Baz the bass player, we watch it a LOT. He's got series six just now, actually. It's not even out here yet. He got it in America somewhere and I haven't had the chance to see it yet, and I'm excited because it's kind of like the last one.


TOTP: What kind of TV should there be more of?
Jon: The Sopranos. There should just be a channel with just the Sopranos on it. I like Friends as well, but I don't really go around telling people that.

TOTP: Why's that? Are you one of those closet Friends fans? Are you afraid to admit it?
Jon: You know what? F*** that! I'm not embarrassed of Friends, I think it's great fun! And I've got lots of DVDs of that. Otherwise I never find anything on TV to watch. So I end up, the odd time that I'm home, putting the Sopranos or Friends on. Cos it makes me feel all warm inside, y'know? It's like a comfort blanket.

TOTP: Well me too! We should form a Friends Appreciation Society...
Jon: That's taking it too far though, isn't it?

TOTP: Oh dammit. Have I blown it already?
Jon: [laughs] I have a reputation to keep up!

TOTP: What TV do you always turn off?
Jon: Pretty much everything on TV. I'm not even kidding. I may catch the news sometimes but otherwise pretty much everything. Reality TV especially. I probably read more than I watch TV. I'm probably the worst person to ask about TV.

TOTP: So you're not addicted to the X Factor then?
Jon: No. It's not through any sort of snobbishness or anything. TV's just not something that's ever really demanded my attention. Apart from things I really genuinely like. Books kind of last a lot longer, I think.

TOTP: OK then, what book would you most like to see made into a TV show...or least like to see made into a TV show?
Jon: I don't think On The Road [cult '50s book about travelling across America] has been made into a film yet, has it? I kind of read that on rotation, and sometimes I just pick it up and open it at a chapter and start reading, that's always been one of my favourites. I've always got a copy of it. I've got three copies of it, actually. When I see it released with different covers I just buy it, y'know? I'd like to see that as a film.

TOTP: Anything else?
Jon: [thinks] Oh! You know what I'd like to see? There's a guy called...what was his name? He's an Irish writer, and he wrote some of the Murphy's Law books. He also wrote these books about a man called Dan Starkey who's this Belfast journalist who never seems to get things right...OH MY GOD! I've seen this film advertised on the side of a bus and it says Snakes On A Plane...what's that about?


TOTP: Ah! Now I can tell you about that, cos Steve from Team Pops is obsessed with it. It's a new version of one of those '70s disaster movies, in which there are snakes loose on a plane. It's got Samuel L Jackson in it, and he's very cross about the snakes...
Jon: You're kidding me? Oh NOOO! It looked like the worst film ever, but it sounds even WORSE! He's obviously playing up to everyone's worst fears, y'know?

TOTP: Yeah, nobody would ever get on a plane again if they watched that film. Especially if it were shown on a plane.
Jon: Oh I hate flying at the best of times. Anyway, those Dan Starkey novels are really good...

TOTP: I looked up the author while we were talking about the snakes, it's Colin Bateman, right?
Jon: Bateman! Yes that's it! I was thinking Colin Murray. They would make a great series. You should read them, there's like four or five in the series and it's all ridiculous situations. Like he goes to visit this island off the coast of Ireland because the second coming of the Messiah is happening there. And when he gets there, the mother of the second coming is this total nightmare alcoholic who tells him he has to sleep with her, and he can't turn her down because 'f*** it, I'm the mother of God', y'know? It's great man, it's really good. Bill Oddie dies in that one...

TOTP: What? WHAAAT?
Jon: It's true! He kills a real person in the book, which is just bizarre! And it would just really work as a series, just to have all of that. In the book, Bill Oddie is sleeping in a caravan next to a cliff, and somebody pushes the caravan off the cliff. And, like, Bill Oddie's a real person! People don't usually go around killing real people in fiction. They've got great names too, like one is called Driving Big Davie.

TOTP: Have you learned any lessons from TV that have proved useful in real life?
Jon: I dunno...keep a clean head and always carry a lightbulb...

TOTP: That's a Bob Dylan quote, isn't it?
Jon: [sheepish] Yeah...well, that was in Don't Look Back [a film about Bob Dylan], and I saw that on TV once, so...

TOTP: Do you ever wish you were in one of those brilliant '60s press conferences?
Jon: More than anything. Whenever we have a video to do I'm always like 'can we get it shot like a '60s black and white thing?'. And the answer is usually 'no, you can't'. Apparently it's really expensive these days to make it look authentic, which is a shame.

TOTP: Videos - brilliant promotional tool, a necessary evil or vile eye poison which gets in the way of the music?
Jon: Well, some of them are really good, aren't they? Our new video is great...

TOTP: Obviously...
Jon: ...the three of us onstage surrounded by 25 burlesque dancers. It's just quite fun. You should see it, it's good! It's not a boring band-playing-on-stage video. Those videos are awful, man, there's just no point in them. Some of them are great though...look at 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' [Bob Dylan's proto-video with lyrical cue cards]...I mean iconic is a rubbish word, but everybody knows it. It wasn't even a single, man, and it works.

TOTP: I like how your eyes try and make the words and music work together and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
Jon: And unless you're really good and you know the words then they're never gonna fit. Things like that are great. And all the old...er...who directed all the Beatles stuff? Richard...Richard...

TOTP: Richard Lester?
Jon: Lester! He did other stuff too, didn't he? Didn't he do Superman or something? I'm sure he did Superman II, actually. Which is bizarre.

TOTP: He definitely did those Three Musketeer films that are always on on Sunday afternoons, and it's confusing cos there seems to be two of them, but they're the same, and it's because it was one long film split in half with the same cast...
Jon: Aw, swashbucklers are GREAT! I love all that.

TOTP: Well there's that and The Man In The Iron Mask...
Jon: The Man In The Iron Mask, that got a hell of a hard time. I thought it was pretty decent. And it was a true story, was it not?

TOTP: That I don't know...I think it's based on an Alexandre Dumas book, isn't it? Cos it's got the three musketeers in it?
Jon: [innocently] Oh don't spoil it for me...aren't they true? I thought they were like Jesus and stuff...[laughs evilly]

TOTP: Gah! Damn you! And GOODBYE!
Jon: Bye!