Pulp Jarvis Cocker Tribute Unbritpop Band Adults Kids T-Shirt

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JD: Rave in its widest sense infuses everything you do. Is that spirit of rave important to your work? Yes – Lucozade sponsored my last show. The production costs were going up and up so I bootlegged a load of Energy T-shirts because I needed something to sell immediately after the show and I thought that would be a goer. What was the last song you heard that made you think, "Wow. What's that song called?" (JonnyMac99, online) If you're returning items from our Buy 3 Get 1 Free Multibuy range then you will be charged for any items that you are keeping. JC: In your last collection you had a Lucozade dress and that really chimed with me. Lucozade used to be something you took to ill people in hospital and it wasn’t until I went to raves when I moved to London that I encountered people who drank it because they’d been up all night. Without them, Lucozade would have died as a product.

This is quite an unusual vision of creative success for a teenage boy, I suggest. “I wasn’t just saying I wanted a yacht and loads of money. I was saying: ‘Yes, we’re going to change the structure of society.’” He laughs ruefully. “Nice idea.” He’d always aimed high. As a child, his career goal was astronaut, superseded post-puberty by pop star. For a shy, lanky kid with glasses and bad teeth, forming a band was a way of being in a gang. “And I really wanted to have friends.”The devastating pot shot when it came, however, was directed not at Tony Blair but at poor Michael Hutchence of INXS. He was looking characteristically dapper as he strode out to present Oasis with yet another award, this time for Best Video. Then Noel Gallagher grabbed the mic and said “Has-beens shouldn’t be presenting awards to gonna-bes”. Well, no – because often the names will get changed. But I have had issues with people. One girlfriend used to punch me. I could see her point, because I do tend to be a bit closed off emotionally. You know when you get into that thing where people want to discuss the relationship? I'd rather discuss what was on telly, avoid the issue, discuss anything other than the relationship. And so this girl, quite rightly, found it a bit much that when she came to concerts you would get all this emotion splurged out on the stage. Her phrase was, "The only time I find out what's on your mind is if I come to one of your concerts." All I can say in my defence is that I wasn't really doing it in a snidey way. I don't get up in the morning and think, "Oh, look at you, you national treasure, you! You're really shiny today!" But it's nice. Everybody wants to be loved, don't they? Especially in the career that I chose: slight emotional neediness is part of it. My route so far through life hasn't been particularly logical, or even thought out. So I think that's a good message to the kids: that you don't have to follow the normal paths, you can be haphazard. I'm not really explaining it very well because it seems a bit self-congratulatory. But if you get recognised for what you do, even if what you do might be a bit all over the place, then… I appreciate that. The unfortunate side effect is [the authorities]can then bring in all these draconian things, like when there was a student march the other week. They let slip: "Oh, yeah – we might have some rubber bullets" or "We might get the water cannon out." When there is something that actually has an agenda, not just "Oh, I want some trainers", that's going to get stamped on. I went on that march and I was amazed, because there were as many police as there were people marching. It was crazy. The original battle lines over capitalism were a bit simpler. It was that the people who make these things are getting paid peanuts and then the things are sold for a lot more and it was exploitation. But there's no actual product now, is there? Capitalism has gone very abstract – so it's harder to say who the enemy is.

Does the phrase "national treasure" make you gag or feel proud? (Screwdriver Cat, online at theguardian.com)

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There are certain things, like the way he stands, and I saw him on stage and he did this funny thing with his mouth, which I think I do. I don't think he's as shy as I was, which I'm glad about. I was ridiculous in the shyness stakes. I set myself a goal as a parent to make him mix with other kids as much as possible so he wouldn't have that. It hampers you if every social situation you're in causes you to panic. He does like his music, so that's like me. But then he's into drumming, which I never was. He chose that. 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.” I didn't grow it to hide anything, I grew it out of neglect. I was at somebody's house and I had no access to shaving facilities for a couple of weeks. I got over the itchy bit, and I thought I'd give it a go. I was horrified to see that it had quite a lot of grey in it. But then you have to get used to the fact that you're getting to a certain age. I've had it for two and a bit years now. I grew up in Colchester. My mum was a psychiatric nurse and she got ill with leukaemia when I was 13 and died when I was 15. Then it was just me and my brother in the house. He was 18 and became my guardian. One of the Heras roses given out at Banger’s show The People Deserve Beauty. Photograph: shop.sportsbanger.com

In the UK, suddenly, I was crazily recognised, and I couldn’t go out any more. It tipped me into a level of celebrity I couldn’t ever have known existed and wasn’t equipped for. It had a massive, generally detrimental effect on my mental health,” he told The New York Times last July. 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”? Speaking of fashion, Jarvis also recounts the time some German family members sent him lederhosen as a gift. "I looked like an Alpine goatherd. But my mum thought it would be fine to go to school looking like this." As you can imagine, much schoolyard ribbing ensued. This was exacerbated when two zips were spotted on the front of the garment. Soon Jarvis was not only known as 'four eyes' but also 'two...' [something too rude to write here]. "I've only had one fist fight in my entire life" When we came to do the shows, a lot of people seemed to think it was very important that I got rid of the beard. There were forum discussions. I thought about it, but I did have a slight fear that I may have developed a double chin in the interim. There could be a jowl under there. So the answer to that question is that I don't think I'm hiding anything.If you paid with a debit or credit card please be advised that this can take 3-5 working days to show on your account.

No – people who work in their office have hit me up and said if I ever need stationery or USBs, to just ask. They’ve sent it over and I use it as record company merch. Is there a song of yours that you think should have received wider recognition? (Chris D Broughton, online) 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 would have loved " Cunts Are Still Running the World" to have been an international No 1, but radio play was quite difficult for that one… I'm always thinking the revolution could still happen, though. At the moment there's a feeling – I got that when I was on that student march the other day… it's just getting more interesting.

We get told stuff like, "You don't understand this thing, so just keep out of it." Well, for a start, we can't keep out of it, because we've had to bail everything out in the first place. I think it's good that people are saying that the system we're supposedly messing up is supposed to actually work for us as well, and it doesn't. And they think we've been through a boom? It weren't that good, were it? I don't think normal people really felt like, "Yeah, wow, I was there. We were lighting cigars with fivers." It's like, "Wow, I missed that one."