We sat around for hours watching Urusei Yatsura play computer games, eat and soundcheck. This was both Alex's first interview and first soundcheck. Ah, the disbelief on his face after five minutes of 'drum check'. Oh yes. They eventually did a fab 'Kewpies' and a cool new song which appears to be about anoraks. It's called 'Superfi', as Graham tells us later. Eska's soundcheck made me make a mental note to be back in time for their actual set and then we watched with interest as three girls walk in holding guitars, followed by some blokes. Sadly, it transpires that they were just carrying their boyfriends guitars and they watched them soundcheck with gooey eyes. The boys were dreadful too - come on girls, you could easily do better!

HAVE YOU A FAVOURITE MOTORWAY?
ELAINE: M8 - it takes you home.
FERGUS: It takes you away from home as well - it's a double-edged motorway.
ELAINE: Actually, the M74 is good 'cos you're just into Scotland.

FAVOURITE MOTORWAY SERVICE STATION?
GRAHAM: Charnock Richard's good, for names.
ELAINE: That one with all the stone stuff and the pool.
GRAHAM: yeah, the ducks. Which one's that?
FERGUS: That's the one in Yorkshire.
IAN: Tebay.
ELAINE: What about that one with the pedalling machine? I don't know where that is.
GRAHAM: Oh yeah! There's one somewhere that's got this game in it - like, you sit on this exercise bike and you start pedalling and the idea is that you're on this kind of gyroscope and you're meant to collect balloons and stuff. It's like a flight simulator but for something really stupid.
ELAINE: You've got to pedal faster to go up.
IAN: It's the only game I've seen where people come off it exhausted. It's also quite good 'cos it's bright yellow.
ELAINE: Many pounds were spent on that.
GRAHAM: It was us and Eska that were doing it. And then Kenny almost got picked up by a strange man.
IAN: "Do you want to earn some money?". I ask you! So, yes, that service station is good and bad. I wouldn't go back to it. It's somewhere between Bristol and Birmingham.

So, eventually we get all of Urusei Yatsura together for an interview. Graham gives us a cool 'Siamese' cat sticker each and two lads come over and ask for autographs. They laugh nervously and disbelievingly but agree. This Pretentious Music Journalist has also turned up and wants an interview too so we end up all heading off together. PMJ leads us to some dodgy, dingy pub where we are immediately accosted by a large white dog, which, I decide, is actually a particularly fluffy sheep. We then spend twenty minutes trying to do a joint interview whilst being interrupted often by strange men demanding we play pool with them ("It's only a game!") or discuss their medical ailments. PMJ alienates us with his lengthy and pretentious questions so we talk to Graham and Ian about spaceships and how rubbish official U.Y. t-shirts are. Graham says he'd like to have a t-shirt like my Hello Kitty one so I offer to make him one. Alex tells them of my love of Ant & Dec and we talk about that Ant & Dec-attended U.Y. gig. Apparently, Ian asked Ant if he could borrow 10p for some fags and Ant replied, "Of course I've got 10p - I'm PJ!" - brilliant. By this time, the barman has decided to play really loud 70's disco music to completely scupper our interview. Alex has to go and work tonight so we say good bye to Urusei and each other and I set off back to the Roadhouse.

IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER PLANETS AND IF SO, WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
GRAHAM: Well, there probably is, but I'm still waiting for it to be proved.
IAN: I've just read this really bad book and apparently Life on Mars looks like seals.
ELAINE: But didn't..? This guy who was doing the Christmas Lectures on telly, he reckons that life on other planets would just look like us because we are the way we are because it's the best way to be no matter what. Like, everything else can survive but we got where we are 'cos of how we are, so any intelligent life would have to be something like us.
GRAHAM: to make spaceships you'd probably need opposeable thumbs, wouldn't you?
FERGUS: What about tentacles? I mean, if you had lots of tentacles..?
ELAINE: Have you ever tried opening a beercan with tentacles?
FERGUS: Maybe you'd make ringpulls that are easier to open with tenta cles than with opposeable thumbs.
GRAHAM: Who knows? But, I mean, on this planet, apart from human beings the only ones that got anywhere are monkeys because they had that thumb thing.
FERGUS: This is a stupid question anyway. We've all seen Star Trek and Star Wars - we know what it looks like...Jabba the Hutt!

I meet up with my...erm, host-while-in-Manchester, David, inside and we watch Eska's set. I like them lots and am convinced to ask Chris for an interview when I spot him by the merchandise stall. I then see Fergus re-attached to 'Bust-A-Move' so I sidle over for a quick chat. He apologises for the short interview and says I can ask some more questions afterwards if I want. I really enjoyed Urusei's set - knowing the songs so well but never having heard them live before. They're much noisier and more powerful for a start. They play two new songs - the afore-mentioned 'Superfi' and supposedly-the-next-single 'Fake Fur' - and also "Skull In Action' off that C96 thing. They play some album tracks too and end with 'Siamese' - yay! Fergus had a megaphone around his neck but I don't actually remember him using it. As I tell Ian afterwards, they should have played the whole set again - only ten songs, it seemed really short. Ian said he was quite knackered enough just doing that.

WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO SIT NEXT TO ON THE FIRST SHUTTLE FLIGHT TO OTHER GALAXIES?
IAN: So, somebody you can actually handle sitting next to for a hundred years...Ned Sherrin! 'Cos I'm sure he could tell you some nice little theatrical anecdotes about him and John Cleese.
ELAINE: Christopher Biggins is supposed to be a good conversationalist.
IAN: Timothy Claypole.
GRAHAM: I'd like to be driving, so no-one would sit next to me. I'd like to sit next to Jimmy Corkhill.
ELAINE: If you'd eaten your meal he could go robbing for you and come back with crappy sponge cake with pink icing.
GRAHAM: No, I plan on being totally frozen throughout the journey so I don't have to bother bringing ten thousand magazines with me.
IAN: Okay, Graham's agreed in actual to be the food on the trip.
GRAHAM: No! I said 'frozen', not 'cooked'.
IAN: Yeah, but you'd be in the deep freeze and if they crashed....you've seen 'Alive', haven't you?
GRAHAM: Yeeeahh...Not much to crash on though in the middle of space. You're not going to hit a mountain are you?

Boring David refuses to come backstage so I go myself to ay goodbye. Ian shoves a can of lager in my hand and Graham throws some water around. Fergus and Elaine, meanwhile, are cooing over some Hello Kitty plasters. Since I can't stay and ask more questions, Graham suggests that we send the rest of the questions to them with a tape and they'll record some answers for us. This agreed, I request one of their bowl-full of jammy doughnuts and say goodbye.

WHAT DOES WOOLWORTHS MEAN TO YOU?
GRAHAM: Cheap guitars.
FERGUS: cheap crappy toys...Pick 'N' Mix!
IAN: It means to me, the only place where you can go and buy, like, the best ever sweets. Where you can buy bubblegum CD's, bubblegum chequebooks, revolving novelty lollipop holders...
GRAHAM: It's where I used to get all my Top of the Pops albums.
IAN: Woolworths really interests me just for that bad sweet thing, total novelty that you'll buy but you don't really want it.
ELAINE: Wee burgers.
IAN: Or there's this Mighty Morphin' Power Ranger...lightsabers - a sort of torch with candy above it.
GRAHAM: I thought those wee burgers were actually erasers.
ELAINE: I think you get eraser ones as well. We had one but nobody ever ate it 'cos it looked so nice.
IAN: That was the rock we brought back from Blackpool that was shaped like a fried breakfast.
ELAINE: That was good...I ate mine.
IAN: I never.

A few months later, after I sent off the tape, questions and Hello Kitty t-shirt, I receive a parcel back from U.Y. Inside is a nice letter and a tape full of them discussing the questions in the pub. Except it's only half a tape as they were obviously doing more than discussing questions in the pub and thus forgot to record the first 45 minutes. They kindly tape us some Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner 'tunes' instead. They also send me a red U.Y. t-shirt in return for the Hello Kitty but, as they predict, it reaches my knees so I send it to Alex.

FERGUS: Ask us another question, Ian.
IAN: Sorry...WHAT WAS THE FIRST BAND YOU WENT TO SEE? I remember I asked you this last week.
FERGUS: Yeah...I said the Cure. I'm not sure if that's right though. It might have been Ride or Slowdive or something horrendous like that.
GRAHAM: I get the feeling the first band I went to see might have been this really horrible Prog Rock band from Edinburgh called Pallas. They played big Prog Rock epics about Atlantis. I've got to explain - this was in Inverness, right? You don't get bands up there. But two weeks after that probably, I went to see the Jesus and Mary Chain 'cos I couldn't take it any more.
IAN: Iwas a really young and impressionable guy and I went to see Blur, unfortunately.
GRAHAM: [to Fergus] You and me both went to see Blur on their first ever tour.
FERGUS: [defensively] I never saw Blur.
GRAHAM: I'm sure you came with me.
FERGUS: Nonononono. I never...I never...I never...I saw them on that Rollercoaster thing but I didn't see them...
GRAHAM: Someone went with me and I can't remember who it was.
FERGUS: Maybe it was me but I have a...it's maybe a hidden memory that I've hidden because it's too traumatic, y'know. Maybe under hypnosis I'll remember.
IAN: What's your first band, Elaine?
ELAINE: Black Lace in Blackpool.
FERGUS: Ohhh...
IAN: I can just see you wearing those pink pedal pushers.
ELAINE: I wasn't that bad..I had a ra-ra skirt and white knee-high socks!
FERGUS: The first band I actually did see was this christian rock band called City who came to our school.
IAN: singing about god, yeah?
FERGUS: Singing about god, yeah. Kind of like Runrig but singing about christ instead of Scotland.
IAN: Question 22...
FERGUS: Oh, we're getting through these at a rate of knots, aren't we?
IAN: I'd just like to say at the moment that there are rather a lot of questions here.
FERGUS: Do you think she'll be bothered transcribing them all?
IAN: Who knows? Maybe not.

No, really, the tape does actually finish there. But, imagine my surprise when I opened a copy of the Melody Maker one week! In my defence, it did have Pavement on the cover. But inside I found a big picture of Urusei Yatsura with Graham wearing his Hello Kitty t-shirt! Nicely customised too. So, hurrah to Graham and indeed all of Urusei - what other band could be so indecisive over such trivial matters as their favourite planet or weather conditions? Finally a band that enjoys Smash Hits questions (which is obviously why they've never actually been in Smash Hits). Incidentally, a few months later, I was explaining to Martin Rossiter of Gene 'fame' why my alter-ego wasn't at thee gig they played in Manchester since I was there. Martin managed to mishear "I was eating jammy doughnuts with Urusei Yatsura" as "YOU were eating jammy doughnuts with Tony Blair!" and got a bit offended. Pop stars, eh?

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