"......When we first started there was only Paul, Stove, a drum machine and myself. Then a mate of ours, Mark, came in as the drum machine operator.
Then another mate, Hib, came into play the drums but he wasn't a drummer. He just played a bit of drums. Basically he wasn't good enough to drum in a band. So we kept the drum loops in there and had him playing along. That was basically why on record, like the first EP and the gigs that we were doing up to that point, were using the samples for drum loops. We'd loop anything we could get our hands on. We'd link drum machines and make our own loops like crap rhythms on Casio keyboards."

But it eventually changed?

"Yeah. Once Mark and Hib realised it started taking off they weren't that
serious about being in a band. I suppose they got a bit scared. They weren't ready to give their lives over to being in Mansun. Which the three of us were very much up for doing. We realised that we weren't good enough and we wanted to get better and the only way to get better was to practice all the time. So they sort of fell by the way side. Later we got Andy in. We always wanted to get rid of the drum machine live and we can do that now because Andy is a brilliant drummer. Also on the records most of the drums are live now. Andy's fitted in. He's a local lad and he's very light minded and we get on with him as if he's always been in the band. Now the four of us have basically got the same aims. We don't try to predict how far it will go, but we're prepared to go as far as we possibly can. If it all fell apart tomorrow I'm sure we'd sit back and think that it was great that we had a number one album. Though in terms of gigs there's another level to move up to. We've got other countries we've never been to and there's always another level which you can move up to. If we can be the biggest band in the world then we will, if we can't we won't."

So how did it feel to be nominated for the Brit Awards? >>