"The Beautiful South in tight formation at their rehearsal suite in Hull. "We're big in Ireland, Lancashire, Birmingham and quite popular in Scotland.  Everywhere except the South!"

As The Beautiful South’s single A Little Time slips down the UK charts from Number 1, in Germany it’s starting to pick up sales. And so, after a spot of light rehearsal for the pre-Christmas British tour, the band pile out of their playing space above a pub in one of our bleaker industrial neighbourhoods and into cars en route for the airport and, eventually, a German TV studio.

All except for their leader, that is. Paul Heaton does not sing this particular song, so will not be missed. Never keen on flying at the best of times, today the former Housemartin hitmaker will be going home to his terraced house, and handling his end of the promotional round while cosily ensconced in a leatherette armchair, surrounded by debris from having the decorators in, and perhaps just a quarter glued to BSC’s Italian league soccer highlights flickering silently in the corner of the room.

We are in Hull, where Paul has lived for six years after months of bumming around Europe with a bunch of old schoolfriends from his native Sheffield.

"On the Housemartins’ first ever tour we travelled by saving up Mars Bar tokens for National Express. We just liked the idea of being frugal".

Unless you have a particular reason; Hull is a very odd place to settle, and his choice of abode is not the least eccentric thing about Paul Heaton, self-effacing pop star.

"We have a running joke in the band" muses the unlikely celebrity. "It’s being Slightly Different for the last two months. You do it to your friends. You don’t dress differently – nothing really obvious. One thing you do is grin. Instead of laughing normally, you go like that," and the features of Yorkshire’s answer to Mr Punch crease into an ever so slightly blood-chilling rictus of parody mirth.

"Patiently awaiting the arrival of a little lager-flavoured refreshment in their Hull local, November '90!"

"I’ve taken up Slightly Different habits as well. I’ve been drinking gin and tonic for two months now, but not many people have picked up on it. Now I’ve told you, the bubble’s burst, which is good because it’s dominating our lives. It’s taken over – but only in a slight way. But that’s still too much. It’s a wonderful rush of adrenaline you get from being Slightly Different; you get such a buzz off it. It’s really addictive – you think about it all the time!"

Just as he seemed to have been washed up in Hull, Paul Heaton only stumbled into music for want of anything better to do after leaving Sheffield’s Lydgate Lane School (alma mater also to Def Leppard’s Rick Savage).

"I didn’t want to go to university because I thought I was too different to do that," he recalls. "I was one of those kids. I’d not got on at school, to be honest. I thought I was dumber than most of the other kids. During the last few months of school, I didn’t really bother to turn up. Punk was happening at the time. I used to follow The Clash for a while, Stiff Little Fingers and a bands called The Smirks from Manchester. I had no idea what I was going to do for a career. I was interested in music but I never felt I would be in a band. I had no training but my brother taught me two or three chords.

"Then I sang in a few bands. I used to sing things I’d made up from books I’d written when I was at school, things about other people. I can’t remember whether I wrote them because I was trying to be mad, or whether I was genuinely a bit stupid up here. They really are very strange, slagging everything off. I’m glad I’m not like that any more. They were pathetic, childish. I had no idea how to use the English language; it was really CSE stream stuff. Which is like how I was".

"The Housemartins - The Fourth Best Band in Hull.   The Band Wi' Nowt Tekken Out etc - in 1984: (from left) Hugh Whitaker, Stan Cullimore, Paul Heaton, Norman Cook.  "We had become real "Wurzle of Hull, professional Northerners.  In hindsight, people only like the joke for a while".

By 1984, Paul had worked with the blind and as a bought ledger clerk. He was, however, beginning to focus on songcraft, and so the now Hull-based would-be bard placed a postcard in his front room window of 70 Grafton Street, down the street from his current address, advertising for young musicians – "I was looking for a songwriting partner, really". He was answered by the resident of number 38, Stan Cullimore, then three more musicians, one of whom left the band in 1985 to be replaced by singer Norman Cook, a former DJ from Brighton. Thus equipped with "a new bunch of mates", Paul put into action his "rough plan".

"I’d heard the sound of my voice over different types of music and I was beginning to learn to which type it was suited, to what keys," he expounds. "When punk started, a lot of people at school, or who had just left, started bands – working-class people I’d knocked around with. But after the explosion stopped it was back to the old middle-class set-up. I had to face up to the fact that I was going to have to knock around with musicians if I wanted to be in a band. So when I put my advert up I knew what sort of people would come out – mainly students. But I didn’t mind that at all; I was interested in students by then. I used to buy books. You’re only ready to start learning at the age of 16, aren’t you? Well, that was the case with me".

The name of the band? The Housemartins – Paul’s idea: "I knew as soon as we were called that, we’d begin to sound like Housemartins. Songs like Sheep and Happy Hour were pretty much like how I imagined before we started – a light version of Buzzcocks, if anything. The first eight months or so, the songs were pretty poor lyrically. But as soon as I’d written a lyric that was decent, Flag Day, I tried to write everything to that standard.

"Lyrics weren’t really on my mind at the time; it was only with the Miners’ Strike that they started becoming important to me," he goes on. "I met a lot of politicised people. I’d spent a lot of my life in Sheffield, a mining district, and connections were set up between the Hull-Doncaster area and the mining areas through the local Labour and miners’ support groups. I wasn’t a member of a political party and didn’t even travel with the miners’ support groups until quite a while into the strike. There were a lot of meetings, marches and fund-raising – personal donations, like I gave away all my toys and soldiers. I wasn’t at Orgreave; I was on my way but we couldn’t get out of Hull that day – there was police all across the motorway. They’d just sealed it off; you weren’t allowed to use the M62 at all.

"Things started to fall into place politically. But I didn’t feel much affinity with people like the Redskins or Billy Bragg because I didn’t think what they were producing was working-class music; I didn’t think miners would listen to that kind of music – it was more studenty. But I did feel encouraged by them turning up at all the meetings and giving support. They were really important at the time. But I’ve always thought that music should be in tune, well played and well sung".

Despite the Barking strummer’s abrasive style not being quite to Paul Heaton’s taste, he heeded the recommendation of his own record company, the innovative and witty shoestring West London operation, Go! Discs (who are now so flush they sponsor Fulchester United’s strip in Viz). The band sent a tape including Flag Day and Sitting On The Fence, which Go! Discs’ Andy McDonald liked, and a deal was inked.

"On our first ever tour of local pubs, we travelled by saving up Mars Bars tokens for National Express," Paul recalls those early days. "It was really funny taking drums and far too much luggage, but they never said no. We just liked the idea of being frugal".

On their second tour, by comparison, The Housemartins wallowed in luxury. Following messages via the John Peel show and the music press, who by then were cottoning on to what Go" Discs boasted was "The Fourth Best Band in Hull", they were subsidised by kipping in fans’ usually spartan accommodations. Early on this was a group whose cheerful Northerness endeared them to the fan in the street: "It’s only when we get into the deep South that we have a little bit of trouble," considers Paul. "With The Housemartins in places like Southampton we’d get a bit of a blank look when we talked about politics. And going from record sales, both The Housemartins and The Beautiful South sell a lot fewer down South and in London. But we are the world’s ultimate Yorkshire band, and we’re big in Ireland, Lancashire, Birmingham and quite popular in Scotland. We’re popular everywhere except the South!"

By 1986, The Housemartins’ fans wre so numerous as to boost them into the charts. Their debut album, cheekily titled London 0, Hull 4, peaked at Number 3, while singles success culminated in an acapella version of Isley Jasper Isley’s Caravan Of Love, the UK’s Christmas Number 1. But in 1987 came a tabloid backlash: "There was what we describe as a press campaign against us. We always made a point of attacking The Sun in the music press, especially during the Wapping dispute, encouraging people to burn it, not read it. There were all sorts of stories – that we all lived in big houses, that I’d been attacked by Nazi skinheads, loads. They were fabrications, though sometimes with a tiny element of truth. Like about Norman Cook’s real name; he’s still not told me, but I think it’s Leo. I don’t know much about his past; he’s just one of those figures that appear at the right time.

"There’s also an element of truth in their story that in an interview with them – which I’d never done – I was anti-Royal. I do hate Royalty, and Stan was talking at the time about cutting up the Royals and selling the bits to Japanese tourists. I believe that one way forward is to do as France has done, which is do away with the Royal Family. That’s why we’re popular in Ireland! I think people are really cynical about Royalty; they’re just bombarded with pictures of Lady Diana associated with good things. It’s like George Orwell. Most people in this country are working-class, and in Ireland, and you’ve got to remember they have a history of suffering at the hands of the Royal Family. They’re literally steeped in blood.

Moving swiftly on, the hits continued that year, and the band participated in the pre-General Election Red Wedge concerts designed to encourage the young to vote Labour. But in February 1988 the band called it a day. Stan and Paul had agreed from the beginning that The Housemartins would exist for no more than three years after the release of their first record. Even so, Paul reckons that personality differences made a split inevitable around that time anyway.

"Everybody wanted to go at different speeds, and soon I knew exactly what I wanted to do, which I’ve achieved with The Beautiful South, and the same with Norman with Beats International. Norman likes to do as much work as possible, and I like to take my time over things and work steadily. Stan, I think, enjoyed a period of working very hard but then found himself a bit lost in the work and so decided he’d like to concentrate on his social and personal life. He wanted a year off, but I’m not into that sort of thing. It reminds me of students".

And so to The Beautiful South, launched in May 1989 with the Number 2 single Song For Whoever ("I love you from the bottom of my pencil case", tum-ti-tum). The members were former Housemartins Heaton and Dave Hemingway, bassist Sean Welch, new co-songwriter and singer David Rotheray, singer Briana Corrigan and drummer David Stead (a former Housemartins roadie, "He was from what at the time was Hull’s avant-garde scene, quite a bizarre drummer. It was like breaking in a bronco: you’d write a clear pop song and he’d come up with these crazy beats"). Unlike his former band, today Paul is the unchallenged top dog. "Because I’m the most experienced, if there are any arguments I tend to win them."

"The name The Beautiful South was chosen because as The Housemartins we had become real Wurzels of Hull, professional Northerners," reasons Paul. "Even if you don’t act like that, that’s still how you come across to a lot of people. Although it gives you some ground initially, in the end people don’t take you seriously – you’re not taken seriously because you’re from Hull. Full stop. In hindsight, people oly like the joke for a while".

But as if to rebut accusations that in their choice of name – and indeed their fondness for being photographed in meadows of flowers – Paul and his new crew had gone soft, the sleeve of the debut album, Welcome To The Beautiful South, pictured a woman about to blow her brains out. Some shops objected; they were supplied with an ad hoc alternative of a teddy bear and a bunny rabbit.

The first LP