Pulp fiction: Being Jarvis Cocker

Besides, he continues, the arrival of television was ‘prob- ably worse than the internet, really. It used to be that tele- vision was “the drug of the nation” or whatever, and now that seems really quaint, because we were brought up with it. But it must have been weird. Just imagine living in a world without telly and then suddenly people are just kind of sitting in rooms looking at the corner, not talking to each other. At least with the internet you’re choosing where you navigate to. Telly, you just turn it on and you just stare at it. That’s what I do. At anything.’

Later — to labour my somewhat hackneyed theme a little further — there is, in place of going viral on TikTok, Pulp’s first John Peel radio session. But before that, in lieu of Twitter, there are hand-written pages headlined ‘PULP FASHION’ (‘plain coloured shirts; rancid ties; hair = shortish (not skinhead); jackets made of strange materials (eg polythene, wood); silly socks’) or ‘THE PULP MASTER-PLAN’.

It’s quite striking how stringently these principles went on to be adhered to, I say. ‘Yes. I’m kind of glad that... I was quite pleasantly surprised that my ambitions were to change the world rather than just say, “I’m going to get really rich and live in a massive house with about 25 cars.” This kind of megalomaniac idea that we’re going to basically make Apple or something like that: have a multimedia conglomerate that’s going to protect culture or whatever.’

Jarvis’s journey to stardom ended up not being as swift as that of, say, a Gallagher or an Albarn. Post- that initial Peel session, there was a long, decade-plus wait before Pulp finally broke through with ‘Babies’ and ultimately ‘Common People’. ‘Sometimes people come up and ask me for career advice,’ he smiles. ‘And the first thing I always say is, “Well, I’m not a good person to give that advice, because it took 12 years before we ever had a hit record. So is that the kind of career you want to have?”’ This, though, he thinks, is a good thing. ‘If you feel compelled to do it and you can’t stop yourself from doing it, then that’s it. You hav- en’t really got a choice. Although that can be a pain, if it’s harder to make a living in it, it’s also quite good to feel like you’ve got a calling. It simplifies life quite a bit. Rather than that kind of horrible scrabbling around — “Well, maybe I could work on P&O Ferries, maybe I could be a writer, maybe a landscape gardener” — it’s good to have some- thing that you just can’t help but do.’

Good Pop Bad Pop concludes, long before the Br*tpop era, in the early Eighties. That second starred-out word, the T-word, rhymes with ‘catcher’ and is the surname of the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom. ‘I lived through the period in which she existed, and it was horri- ble, so I just don’t want her around [in the book]. I was talk- ing to someone about this the other day: there was a biopic of her a few years ago and it was on the side of buses and it was horrible, because you’d just suddenly see this bus go past and go, “She’s back.” It was like a nightmare. A Freddy Krueger kind of nightmare.’

Who does he think is worse, M*ggie or Boris? ‘I think the thing is that she... she was like a revolutionary basically, a right-wing revolutionary, just totally changed the land- scape of the country. Boris Johnson is really just kind of carrying on in her vein, but she did the heavy lifting and he’s just trying to take it through to another level. I don’t know what the f*** the level is that he’s trying to take it through to. It’s like, “Look, you can be the biggest c*** in the world and they’ll still keep you in office.” I don’t know. “Look how much I can take the piss out of everyone and still be in charge.”’

Is Boris not more sinister in some ways, though? With the whole bumbling... ‘But it’s a similar thing, that the party faithful or the people who like him really love him. They aspire to be like him. “Donnez-moi un break.” I heard him saying that and I’m just thinking, “F*** off.” And of course he’s still current, so that’s, I don’t know — depressing.’

Does Jarvis still vote? ‘I do still vote, yes.’ For Labour? ‘Yes. But I don’t like Keir Starmer, really. I think Angela Rayner should be in charge. She seems... she’s just got a bit more of something about her.’

I wonder whether Jarvis takes much of an interest in modern-day pop music. ‘No. I’ve zero knowledge. I watched the Brits earlier this year and I really felt like an old duffer. Like, “What the f*** is happening here?”’ Was there no one you connected with? ‘Well, Liam [Gallagher] was on, weren’t he? Liam was on, arriving via helicopter. That was alright.’

I ask what kind of music Jarvis’s son, Albert, 19, is into. ‘Quite a lot of drum’n’bass. Him and his mates are into... well actually, they prefer when it was called jungle. Drum’n’bass is when it got a bit more posh. They like the early, quite rough stuff. But a feature of this modern land- scape, which is quite a good thing I think, is that he’ll listen to stuff from all over the place.’

As for TV, Jarvis says he tries to avoid it ‘because, as I say in the book, I watched it so much as a kid’. He hears about stuff. ‘My mother was telling me the other day about... what is it? Naked Attraction? She’s been watching that, which horrified me. I thought maybe she’d gone into premature senility or something. There can’t be something on telly like that. But there is, apparently. I’ve not watched it. Honest. But she gave me a full description of it. She loves it.’

And on that note... it’s pretty much time to go. Jarvis has to head off to the other side of Shepherd’s Bush to record Private Passions on Radio 3, where you pick out seven pieces of classical music, ‘like a higher end Desert Island Discs... although Desert Island Discs is already quite high end. I’m excited about it.’

Finally I ask, given that the book ends pre- his properly famous years, whether there will be a follow-up? He must surely be aware that people would love to read about the quote-unquote glory years? Of him getting arrested for wafting his arse onstage at the Brits in front of Michael Jackson? Of Pulp’s ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’ making the front page of the Daily Mirror (‘BAN THIS SICK STUNT,’ it screamed of the sleeve’s instructions as to how to fold a wrap)? Of headlining Glastonbury? Of being part of the unmentionable movement? Of...

‘The stuff they’ve actually heard about?’ Well, yes. ‘I don’t know... then you’ve got other people’s memories of the same thing, which there isn’t so much of in this. I think it’s good to have done it this way because it’s like writing down your plan of what you wanted to be like when you were famous. And I think some of those ideas I did somehow subconsciously carry through to when we did become famous. So it’s good. Then you get an idea of why things panned out in the way that they did. But as to whether I’ll write more? We’ll see.’

A week or so later, on the rainy Sunday just past, I turn up at the Gallery of Everything on Chiltern Street for the launch of Good Pop Bad Pop — The Exhibition. Well-wishers peruse a reconstruction of Jarvis’s childhood bedroom, while Jarvis himself signs books for the likes of director Chris Morris and heavyweight author Karl Ove Knausgård (who buys six copies, because he ‘likes heavy books’).

‘Did you use the “Bitter Sweet Symphony” thing?’ Jarvis asks, grinning, when I bump into him. Er, maybe, I say, sheepishly. Sometimes when you’re writing something you just need a good beginning. And also an end.

‘Good Pop Bad Pop’, by Jarvis Cocker, is released on 26 May (£20; Jonathan Cape); the exhibition is on at the Gallery of Everything until 29 May.