Scallydelic madmen Space came to Warwick Students' Union and lesser mortals Nathan and Max interviewed them.

You can sense a band that are popular. It's just something in the air - toxic pheromones, apparently. Anticipation. A queue to get in that stretches a mile long. And they turn up for their soundcheck six hours late. Bloody popstars.

Firstly, though, we had something to clear up. Like, are they red or blue supporters?

"Who do you think ?" said Jamie, the guitarist/songwriter/part singer, whose ginger hair was the only clue; but once we'd pledged our allegiances to all causes red, things became much comfier. We asked Jamie to open his heart to us, and tell us the problems of having to cope with being average scouse bloke one minute, and national popstar the next.

"We never expected this, and we've said this hundreds of times. But now we've just learnt to deal with it. We don't have egos or nothing. But as far as the songs go, I don't think that any band can think 'right, we've got this song and it's gonna be massive', I mean you just write a tune that you think's great and your mam thinks it's great, but you can't imagine like a hundred thousand people going and buying it. It's weird."

But what we have to tell ourselves is that there just wasn't a band around that sounded quite like Space; or moreover, sounded quite like a reggae-techno-indie crossover band, with bits thrown in ? Aren't you slightly contrived for that gap in the market ?

"Well, we were kinda fifty-fifty, I mean we knew it was either shit or bust, and with our sound we were on an edge, la. We were either gonna do it, or get fucked right off. But lucky for us we got accepted ...."

And the rest, they say, is history. An irritatingly catchy first single that I can even remember being played on the chart show, and then BAM - the big Evans grabbed 'Female of the Species', and so did half the nation, meaning that any single automatically goes top twenty, there's sell out tours, reviews, interviews, and television appearances all over the place, from music press, to TFI Friday, even Richard and Judy.

"We've done hundreds of telly interviews now, la, and after the first couple, you just get used to it. But with Richard and Judy, we were like, star struck, and it was like they're the stars. It was the best thing we've ever done."

But isn't Richard and Judy for old retired people and housewives? "Who cares about that, la ? Judy's fit - I tell you, la, if it wasn't for that Richard, I'd ask Judy out!"

So, if you all thought that pop stars were arrogant or that they forgot about all the little people when they're famous and rich, we used our fail-safe Are-they-alright-blokes? question, to find out just what they were made of. Well, you seem like normal scouse lads - how do all your mates back home react to you being a big famous popstar? "I've got the best mates in the world, and whenever we go out, they don't see me as that, you know, the band doesn't get mentioned. And all me mates are footballers, anyway, so they're probably on more money than me!"

But enough of all this fame and success, what about the important stuff - what about your rock n' roll tour stories ?

"We've got hundreds and hundreds. There's just too many. But we've always said that we're not rock n' roll, but on tour I just go completely bonkers, and it's a different girl every night, and I swear that, la. When you've got this much ale in front of you, how can you not ? But I reckon all my footballing mates have got better rock n' roll stories than we 'ave ! We're definitely not rock n' roll where you throw tellies outta the window, we just get pissed every night, and no matter who you are, when you're pissed, you're going to be a tit. So I wouldn't say we were rock n' roll, we just acted like tits every night!"

What about the future, then? Now that you're main stream are you going to try and mess things up ?

"Well," says Jamie, "We've never gone out of our way for the sound we've got, or thought oooohhhh- lets make sure this sounds like this, we just sound like that anyway. But we've always said that the second album's gonna be totally different - maybe madder, maybe more mainstream, but certainly different, completely different from the first one." But Spiders is just so diverse, how are you going to make the second one different ?

"The lyrics come to me just like that, easy - it's just the tunes that we're working on. I'm really getting into the Prodigy and Cypress Hill, big time, you know what I mean? So I reckon my stuff's gonna be more techno. But I also like Catatonia, and I've been listening to that a lot. Tommy's stuff is gonna be more Frank Sinatra, and when Franny (keyboards) gets hold of it, he's gonna fuck it right up!" So let's just get this straight - who writes what?

"Me and Tommy write the songs and the lyrics, then Franny gets his little bit to put over the top, and then we mix it up from that."

Now, the final question to end all questions - Should Liverpool sell Collymore? And the verdict was yes - "well, now that we've got Berger, it'd make sense, wouldn't it ?"

So, I guess that Space were everything you've ever heard - reggae indie techno crossover that aren't rock n' roll and aren't a guitar band. They're an everything band. Imagine Richard and Judy, the Prodigy and Cypress Hill, versus Chris Evans, Frank Sinatra, and you and me, all at the Scouse Derby at Anfield, and the music in the stalls would be Space. Just don't ask any of it to make sense.

Jamie from Space was talking to Nathan and Max, in November 1996.