Nathan went to the Brat Bus tour and talked to three out of the four bands. When he wasn’t talking about fast food he asked Tiger, Geneva and Symposium some decent questions. Here Tiger discuss the Big Breakfast, Tony the Tiger and sort out the really big issue: sex, drugs or rock ‘n’ roll.

Currently, three-fifths of Tiger are in a dressing room in Leicester. They are hungover. The last thing that Seamus (drums), Dido and Tina (both keyboards) want to do is an interview. They want to sleep. Or start drinking again. However, from the depths of the mire an interview was pulled.

Somehow, we immediately find ourselves discussing their Big Breakfast appearance in Dublin.
“I thought I was on serious drugs.” says Tina. “You’ve got Frank Carson dancing one side and Dannii Minogue dancing on the other, with someone dressed up as an egg. What weird world were we living in?”

But surely it meant an early start, not what pop stars are accustomed to?
“We had to get up at around half five. The day before we’d done a session with Mark Radcliffe. We drove back down from Manchester to London, straight into the studio, listened to the mix. We got cabs to the airport, flew over to Dublin, got there at about midnight and obviously had to have something to drink. We drank ‘til about half-two. Then we got up at half-five. We had to have the drink in the middle. Did the thing on the Big Breakfast with the egg, and drove back to the airport. It was all very mad.”

Tiger have a strong link with breakfasts in general, with the inevitable Tiger / Frosties puns being made in every headline about them.
“This photographer bought a load of breakfast cereal along for a photo shoot we were doing. He had bags of it, and we just said ‘no, forget that, we’re not doing that.’ We saw him about a week later, at the Roundhouse for a Bluetones gig. I said ‘How are you doing’ and he said ‘I’m sick of fucking cereal. All I’ve got is fucking cereal, I’ve been eating all these bloody boxes. I never want to see any again as long as I live.’”

Despite the lack of amusing cereal / band interfaces in their photos, Tiger appeared on the scene in a blaze of publicity. They had a hit with ‘Race’, but then the chart action tailed off big time, with the album barely making the top 100. Disappointed?
“The album came out when we didn’t think it was possible to get the sales it’d get now. It would have sold more now” says Seamus, somewhat optimistically. “We wanted the album to come out early because we just wanted people to hear the music. It’s not that we’ve got a problem with people talking about how we look - its just that that’s all they were talking about. They weren’t talking about the music. If we had the music out then people could comment on that, and not just on one or two singles. From our point of view we wanted to get it out, even if that meant sacrificing whatever chart placing we might have got. That doesn’t matter because the album will carry on selling. If it means that the sales will become much bigger after the second album it doesn’t really matter.”

So would Tiger have preferred less initial publicity, and a more gradual build-up?
“It’s hard to say when you don’t know. We might have got fed-up if with it happening slowly and thought ‘would it please happen a lot quicker’. We’re very impatient people.”

You can’t really interview Tiger without mentioning the image (or lack of it) so, inevitably, the issue crops up.
“Our image is very important to us. We talk about it all the time, but you wouldn’t think it. Its about not being pressured into being like everyone else. Everyone wants to look cool, but you don’t have to look cool by going to these chain stores.”

So, to the real meat of the life itself, and a question which provokes an argument in the Tiger ranks. What’s more important, sex, drugs or rock and roll?
Seamus: “Sometimes with enough sex and drugs I can live without rock and roll.”
T: “It depends on how you’re feeling, if you’re feeling sexy.”
S: “That’s a difficult question because rock and roll is really important, being in a band is really important, but procreation is the fundamental driving force of existence.”

So the act of procreation is more important than the actual sex?
S: “No, sex is most important, but I’m just trying to get round it that way. Sex is a really nice thing to do, but you’ve got a primary drive to do it as well. I don’t know that you’ve necessarily got a primal drive to do rock and roll. And drugs, well I don’t know about that at all.”
T (after much thought): “I think for me it would have to be rock and roll. I only want drugs if they’re gonna cure something.”
S: “What about sex?”
T: “Sex is all right if you’re in the mood.”
S and D (at exactly the same moment): “Tina, that’s bloody sad.”
T: “Well, I could live without sex more than I could live without music.”
S (incredulously): “Without rock and roll?”
T: “Yeah.”
D: “God, I couldn’t.”
S: “You can’t live without sex.”
D: “How boring.”
T (sadly): “I did live without sex for a long time”
D: “Cut! Shall we move on”
T: “The thing is, whenever you mention anything about sex to Tiger, we just dwell on sex.”

Okay then, let’s avoid sex, says your baggage correspondent, prompting much hilarity amongst the assembled throng.

No, avoid sex while the tape recorder’s on, was what I meant to say. At this comment, Seamus almost has to be picked up from the floor, and I quietly remove my foot from my mouth. I don’t go for a cold shower as Tina suggests, but we do sit there discussing Tiger’s almost pathological hatred for the Spice Girls and their love of Iggy Pop, David Byrne, The Fall and The Sex Pistols, Dan’s army fetish, their surreal b-sides and their preference for Burger King over McDonalds. Then, they must begin drinking. Again.

Tiger were talking to Nathan, in January 1997.