Examplary Interview – With the Arctic Monkeys featured on the leeds music scene website.

"I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor", Arctic Monkeys' second single and first full-scale release, has shifted a rattling avalanche of around 33,000 copies thus far whilst simultaneously thrusting a very sharp, very painful spear labelled "Reality Check" up the rear end of the boring, apathetic public.

I write this two days after the UK gained a new chart-topping single packaged humbly in a polo shirt and a slightly-worse-for-wear Adidas jacket with a look of vague shock and a small smile of acknowledgement slapped haphazardly on its face. 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor', Arctic Monkeys' second single and first full-scale release, has shifted a rattling avalanche of around 33,000 copies thus far whilst simultaneously thrusting a very sharp, very painful spear labelled 'Reality Check' up the rear end of the boring, apathetic public. People are throwing stupid moves in clubs/pubs/front rooms all over the country. People are doing that unspoken-of thing in the middle of the flooded, leaf-choked streets: laughing. People have discovered, at long last, that they have ears.

Laying aside all possible lame jokes that the phrase "After twenty minutes on the Monkeys' tourbus..." could instigate, I will say, firstly, how very humble, loveable and somewhat tired these young men seem. Slightly overwhelmed, rather nonplussed and a tad bored, understandably, by the media parade surrounding them (they've had to divide themselves into two today to keep up with the schedule: guitarist Jamie Cook and bassist Andy Nicholson battling an interrogation somewhere in the midst of the venue's soundchecks; myself, drummer Matt Helders and frontman Alex Turner mumbling around on a very, very orange indeed coach), they look in desperate need of entertainment and a good brisk walk to slap some fresh air into their pale chops. Fiddling with any available roll of sellotape, twiddling mobile phones and nudging a stray DVD ('24 Hour Party People', if you're interested) around the table, Alex is your tiny-bit-awkward boy-down-the-road who would probably rather be playing about on the food-splattered acoustic lying upturned on the raggedy seats than shiftily avoiding excessive eye-contact with yet another stranger in possession of a recording machine, especially one with a fatigued Dictaphone which conveniently snuffs it halfway through the interview. A rapid change of batteries ensues, followed by a tedious back-step through a few questions, although none of us can even remember what we said ("It was probably rubbish, anyway" admits Turner). It's all very ramshackle; but their world is, after all, a crazy one.

So there we have it. Four impossibly-normal, nervously-excited, ridiculously-knackered boys, perched, teetering, on the brink of a stupidly enormous amount of fame. Watch them fly...