There’s a line in Spike Island, Pulp’s new song – ‘The universe shrugged, shrugged then moved on.’ It’s been taken as a comment on Jarvis Cocker’s and Pulp’s own popularity – after reaching the very top in 1995 / 96, they were swiftly heading back down without anyone really noticing. I can’t help feeling I let Jarvis down, ditching him for the ‘cool’ kids.

Pulp was the first band I ever related to. The songs were about the stuff I knew, I saw, I lived. A working class life. Jarvis would have loved the gossip in Hair by Melanie, my mum’s little corner shop hairdressers. She never knew I was listening, but I banked all the stories I shouldn’t have heard. Sex on pool tables after last orders, 30-year-old virgins being ‘shown the way’, customers discussing illicit affairs and inappropriate crushes. 

When I first heard Babies, I thought, yep, I would have definitely hid inside that wardrobe. Talking of which, this reminds me in a roundabout way of being invited into a friend’s bedroom while she and two other girls got changed for a night out. They didn’t see me like the other lads. I was like some benign asexual being deemed to have no interest in tits whatsoever. Well, I did, and I was so shocked at seeing the much discussed breasts of Emily Craven (not real name) reflected in the wardrobe mirror, that I didn’t even tell any of my mates. I kept it to myself. Maybe it didn’t really happen. 

Disco 2000. Fully experienced that. Watching the girls I had fallen for, the ones I had entertained, made laugh, supported and listened to, go off with someone with one brain cell and the personality of a sea slug. But he looks like Ryan Giggs, while I looked like Jonny Briggs, so, you know… can’t compete there. 

I always felt like an outsider. I was in the Misshapes gang, for sure. I remember reading the manifesto on the insert inside the CD single and thinking, ‘I’m on your side Jarvis’ and I couldn’t be prouder. I certainly got picked on at school and outside. I wasn’t afraid to tell people that I loved art, comics and a bit of Beethoven. The only reason I probably didn’t get beaten up was because I played football. Not that I was particularly good at it. Being a nerd and into football don’t usually go together. I stopped short of ever feeling the need to properly stand out. When my dad’s Colombian girlfriend bought me a knitted rucksack, with Aztec patterns, I politely declined the gift and gave it to my sister. ‘But all the boys in Paris have them.’ Can you imagine turning up for school, in Hucknall, with that on my back? During my university years, I once went back into Hucknall wearing a long Matrix-style leather jacket. I thought I looked magnificent and fucking cool. As soon as I stepped off the bus I got called ‘gay’.

Sorted for Es and Whizz. I never had the guts to do drugs. The Leah Betts story absolutely killed that for me. (Clearly all the stories about the alcohol related deaths did not). Despite the tabloid froth it was never a celebration about drugs, hence the last line of the song. I never had any desire to go to a rave either. Being given a map and location of the said rave would only lead to me being kidnapped and my kidneys cut out and sold. I’ve never wanted to be lost. A healthy mindset, perhaps. During an overnight outdoors ‘fun’ exercise for youth groups, I, the map reader, managed to get our team lost in the dark of Sherwood Forest. We arrived at a road, no sign of the hundreds of people taking part, and I remember thinking, ‘we’re dead, we’re absolutely fucked.’ So, a rave. No thanks. What the song does remind me of is the feeling that it wasn’t long before I could escape, before life would happen for me. Listening to Sorted in the car with a mate, dark fields around us, post-industrial, post-mining, post-anything Hucknall in the distance. It would soon all be left behind for a new life.

So much has been written about Common People, rightly so. I recognised a lot in the song, but it wasn’t as poignant as when I started university. Suddenly there were proper middle-class kids who had their own cars, paid-for gym memberships, not having to work because Daddy paid for it all. No full student grant? No bother. Why do Safeway when you can go to Waitrose? I remember having to put my mum’s income into my grant forms and feeling embarrassed for her.

I wanted to be Jarvis. At Rock City’s student nights I would pretend to be him and I didn’t care what anyone thought. I saw him and Pulp at the same venue and it still remains one of my favourite gigs, just because it was him and them. It should have carried on like that, but ahem, something changed (sorry). Regrettably I fell in with the group who, at school, would have shot darts at me from the back of the class. The sort who kicks your ball over the fence. ‘Fetch that y’ twat’. We’re talking Oasis here, of course. I fell for the lure of the troublemakers. I didn’t want to miss out. It felt like the cool kids had welcomed you in. A bit like when I was invited to red base, at school, during a wet break. But like red base you never really felt like you belonged. Knebworth was a fantastic experience, but largely for reasons that weren’t Oasis. I was with my best mate John for a start, the last time we spent time together before he went to university. The last adventure. I assumed this was it for us (We’re still mates 30 years on). I also saw for the first time, the Manics and The Charlatans, two bands who still mean so much more to me than Oasis ever did. 

That evening, I remember looking around as the front pen got more crowded and seeing Dennis Wise. Proof if ever than I didn’t belong with this lot.  It should have finished there really. After that day. But they limped on and on. And yes, I bought Be Here Now. 

Pulp released This is Hardcore during my first year at uni. I had a poster of Different Class Jarvis flicking the Vs on my wall. I bought the album as soon as it was released. It wasn’t His ‘n’ Hers or Different Class. Much darker. It reflected my mood at the time. Sad, lonely, pretty miserable. I liked it, but it wasn’t the same. I still have trouble getting through it. My interest dwindled. I didn’t bother with We Love Life. I only bought the Greatest Hits when it was on offer at HMV for a fiver. I didn’t go to the Sherwood Pines gig which looking back would have been amazing. The solo albums were ok. I loved Jarvis’ shows on Six Music or any interview he does. I even named my dog after him. His book Good Pop, Bad Pop is brilliant. An ingenious way of telling his life story through objects he’s taken from house to house in plastic bags, stored away in the attic. I’ll have to do my own version. Why I’ve kept the A-Team sticker album is a mystery.

In one of the many recent articles about Pulp’s new album (which is superb by the way) it said history has been kind to them. I think that’s true. They’re the only ones who have survived ‘Britpop’ with any real credibility. 

I never thought I’d get the chance to see Jarvis and Pulp perform again. You know when you get a sweat-on trying to purchase tickets, the fear that it’s all going to crash before you hit pay? That. Take my money. I’ll look at the price later. 

So swivel.