Once free of the constraints of The Housemartins he became, he says, everything he shouldn’t have.”I became an arrogant workaholic. You know, not having time for my friends and basically pissing everyone off.” You became the job, then? “Yeah, I was taken over by it I thought I was Prince.” He became self-destructive. I’d have probably saved their record collections.” Instead, he founded Beats International and had a No 1 hit with Dub Be Good To Me And this is where it all started to go wrong. “I thought I’d have to go and get a proper job.” Which would have been? “A fireman The uniform is quite nice And you get laid a lot, apparently But I’d probably have been useless I wouldn’t have saved people’s children or dogs. We deliberately tried not to fall into any of the traps.” Which are? “Believing your own publicity, not being able to calm down after having gross excitement, not being able to go back to a normal life afterwards, just losing touch with reality.”The Housemartins disbanded in 1988. Norman was partly relieved – “I didn’t want to be doing that kind of music any more” – and partly devastated. I remember my first time on Top of the Pops and getting the Tube home afterwards.

I wanted a leather jump suit with my name sequined on the back.” But Paul, as it turned out, was very much against the whole celebrity shebang “So, actually, we didn’t do any of the pop-starry things. He met Paul Heaton (the founder of The Housemartins, who now fronts The Beautiful South) while doing his A-levels, and joined the band when the bassist quit just before their first tour. The Housemartins had two massive hits – “Happy Hour” and “Caravan of Love”. He was, he says, very up for being a pop star.”Oh yes, I’d always been attracted by the glamour of it all.

Anyway, he started amassing quite a record collection and, at 15, was already DJ-ing. He got very into punk, colouring his hair with poster paints at the weekend, washing it out on Sunday night He wasn’t a great punk. “I wanted to look aggressive and horrible and dangerous, but I was too cute.” His sister, he says, used to call him “Julie” because he looked more like Julie Andrews than Johnny Rotten. Now I can see there are good things about it, like expecting more than two square meals a day, and maybe a video-recorder.”He fought against his background through music, as teenagers tend to do. It means you have fruit in the house even when no one is poorly. He says it doesn’t: “No, it’s about believing you are better than other people Or that’s what I thought when I was a kid. “And I always remember my dad saying: `Do you want to end up like your grandad?’ And I thought: `Yes I do.’ He seemed to have a much happier attitude to life.” I say I like being middle-class.