So there’s bad pop and good pop, hunger of all kinds and art as a consistent source of nourishment and pleasure. Several times he mentions that he’s trying to get better at relationships, rather than zoning out in front of the TV and putting all his feelings in a song instead. Clearing out the attic is part of a concerted effort to get to grips with old stuff, on an emotional as well as physical level: to change bad habits, to communicate more instead of escaping into fantasy. “Me ringing you this morning about the dog situation, that was a slight breakthrough,” he announces, surprisingly, “because a few years ago I would have just worried about it. The journey would have been an absolute nightmare. So then ringing, even though I wasn’t pleased about being late, at least I knew I’d dealt with it.” In the book he describes trying to provide some kind of sex education for his own adolescent son, to the mortification of both parties. It worries him, the fact that sex and life have become so severed. “Because what you’re dealing with is you get those feelings, those instincts, at a certain age and they are strong feelings and you’ve got to deal with them in some way and if there are no clues except some kind of foul thing online where you start to think of people as objects, and why aren’t I getting my sex that I was promised – or whatever, I don’t know what those people think.”

he writes books like he writes songs - conversational, narrating everyday events and emotions - the way you'd narrate what going on in front of you to yourself in your head. I listened to Jarvis narrate the audiobook complete with PDF containing photos of all the items. I loved every second. This is the way Jarvis tells chunks of his life story. It's ridiculously entertaining and enjoyable. Such a brilliant book! Not the usual memoir, essentially it’s Jarvis clearing out his loft, a storage space full of stuff he has hoarded over the years and he uses pictures of the various items to tell stories from his life from his childhood to his acceptance into art college (there has to be a sequel!). Some parts are just laugh out loud and there’s great photographs too.To be fair the rubbish and er treasure he hauls out of his attic are obviously used as jumping off points, and I admit I was a little sceptical at first, but I was soon won over, not least by the chapter on Cussons Imperial Leather, which was near flawless. (I had no idea that they had changed the logo).

How did he navigate it, the forcible switch from observer to observed? “I don’t know if I did navigate it. Fame in our times has taken the place of heaven in past belief systems. You think that your life’s a bit drab or it’s not really working, but if you’re famous you’d be at the front of the queue, you’d be at the best table, all this kind of paradise. So to experience this thing that’s got this weird belief system around it – and also this belief system you’ve constructed yourself – it’s never going to be what you thought. I didn’t end up in the telly.” He pauses to consider. “To turn your nose up at it doesn’t seem right because you do want people to engage with what you’re doing. But it’s the other bits. It’s the being observed part that wasn’t so good. I prefer to be furtive.” What started as a furious nighttime read beginning got swiftly ruined by a consecutive run of painfully early work shifts and a week full of birthday dinners and drinks. Starting Pulp was a way too of alchemically transforming everyday existence into a more fantastic version. Several times in our conversation he touches on his persistent desire to live inside the TV, a zone of adventure populated by dinosaurs, Daleks and the Monkees. “I realise that image doesn’t work so much now because TVs are just flat screens. But when they were boxes you kind of thought – what’s in it? You could almost imagine fitting inside it.”I have written a book called Good Pop, Bad Pop, which is based around the objects I found in the loft of a house I used to live in. Objects I collected over the course of a lifetime & then left to gather dust in the dark. Why? Am I a hoarder? Or did I think I was laying things away “for a rainy day”? What is in part a trip down the memory lane of another is also the much needed gutting of a loft owned by a procrastinating musician. very cool. very arty. lots of colour photos! very well designed book. there's a lot of books written by musicians at the moment that have excellent graphic design and photos and I love it. the design is actually more like a magazine than a book - lots of colour and overlapping photos and important titles in bigger fancier fonts and brighter colours.