"Heroes on a half shell/They’re on a mission/When there’s a battle got the enemy wishin’..."

Lord. Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray - the songwriting partners who are responsible for The Beautiful South’s tunes - seem to have been rather smitten by the Mutant Ninja Turtle bug. They’re sitting facing each other at a table zestily shouting the words of the "Turtle Power" anthem at each other, to the bemusement of the other members of their group.

"...They stayed at home instead of fightin’!"

That’s not all. Paul Heaton the bloke who writes the words, has just purchased a Raphael puppet for the princely sum of £1.50 and it’s quite the most pathetic scrawny looking puppet you’ve every seen.

"Hero on a half-shell", blurts out Paul again, wiggling his puppet about.

"But it hasn’t got a shell," points out one of the group members, rather perceptively, seeing as how the puppets makers have somehow omitted to add that part.

"Hero on a quarter shell," prompts Dave Rotheray, helpfully, licking the bright green Turtle sugar lolly that he’s been running his tongue over for the last four hours.

"Hero on a no shell" pronounces Paul, examining his furry chum closely.

Yes indeed, they’re a bit of a double act are Paul and Dave. Not only are they the pair who concoct such fine tunes as "A Little Time", but they’re best mates too, hanging out together and sharing thoroughly incomprehensible in-jokes with each other. Today though, they’ve been to the funfair with the other members of the group, Dave Stead, their youthful drummer, Sean Welsh the bass player, and Dave hemingway, the bloke who sings on "A Little Time". Also there is their chum Briana Corrigan, the young woman who duets with Hemingway on the aforementioned tune.

The thing about The Beautiful South is that they just don’t look or act the slightest bit like pop stars. Dave Rotheray - just for example - is wearing a rather uncharacteristic, ill-fitting, somewhat grubby grey sensible pullover. The six members of the band mooch around the place, eventually plumping for one ride on something called the Ski Jump before abandoning that for the bumper cars. "Again!" they shout, each time the cars draw to a halt. £50 later, they finally abandon the cars, beaming broadly, to settle down for a chat with Smash Hits.

When you ask them about what it’s like being in The Beautiful South, they get deeply philosophical, and decide that they don’t really feel like they’re in a pop group at all.

Paul explains: "We feel like the Bumpkin Billionaires, from Topper, or Dandy. These kids who’ve inherited billions of pounds and they just want to get rid of it. Only each time they put it all on a horse, the horse wins!"

"It’s just everything’s a bit unreal, sometimes," says Dave Rotheray. "If we’re on Top of The Pops and I see it I think, "Hold on. This can’t be the real Top of The Pops!" he chortles.

Paul and Dave Rotheray might be the group’s writers, but its actually Paul who is, on the quiet, the group’s unofficial leader, partly because of his track record with the once famous Housemartins, and partly because he’s got a bit of an "idea" of how he wants The Beautiful South to be.

"It’s true," says Briana. "You get really mad if we’re not doing a song like you imagine it".

"Yeah," ponders Paul. "I do".

They chatter about how Paul went all moody when he felt Briana and Dave Hemingway weren’t singing "A Little Time" properly.

"I just thought they were singing it lazily!" protests Paul.

"You can really tell when he’s in a mood," agrees Dave Rotheray. When asked to describe Paul, Dave explains, "Paul is deeply lovely, but he’s always determined to pretend that he isn’t. He’s determined to maintain his shell-like exterior. He’s a hero in a half shell, ha ha!"

The rest of the group more or less seem to accept that Paul’s the unofficial boss. They start discussing whether they should appear on The Des O’Connor Show. Most of the group seem to think it would be a laugh. Then they turn to Paul. "What do you think?"

"No," he announces. "I think it would be a little too... ironic".

The rest of the group nod, affably, not really bothered either way. Dave Rotheray gives his sugar turtle one final lick and breaks it off his stick, sending it plummeting to a rather filthy floor. Calmly, he picks it up and carries on licking the side it didn’t land on...

"This side is all right".

See what I mean? Not the slightest bit pop star like, are they?

Briana is the flame headed songstress who Paul first "discovered" when her college group The Anthill Runaways sent a demo tape into the South’s record company. She’s the only one of the group who lives in London and admits to feeling a bit of an outsider. "It’s a bit difficult sometimes," she confesses.

"They are sort of lads, to a certain extent, and you can feel a bit out of their jokes". "Great lady, great voice," smirks Dave Rotheray. "100% lady!"

"It’s not a love song," explains Paul Heaton, who writes the words. "It’s a relationship song.... Yeah, I probably did write it a bit from personal experience. I’ve probably been in a situation myself where I said "I need a little time". And I’ve certainly been in a situation where I’ve thought it of other people, do you know what I mean?"

"Well," reckons Dave Rotheray, who co-wrote the tune, "it still is a love song, but it doesn’t follow the same path as every other love song".

Paul again: "I think The Beautiful South philosophy is to treat our fans with intelligence. They’re not stupid. People think our songs go over people’s heads, but they don’t. "A Little Time" is a common situation, but people who write songs for idiots think you can’t be too wordy in a song".

"I think there’s definitely a place for ordinary love songs", concludes Briana, "but they hardly ever let you see the other side of love. Love’s not always pretty, it can be a really horrible situation. I think this song shows that relationships aren’t always film-like. Then they end, they’re really bloody horrible and they can show the worst side of human beings. Some people don’t really sing about that..."