We got Caro Howell, director of the Foundling Museum, to write the name of our last fashion show on all the invitations, because she’s got beautiful handwriting. So she came here and wrote “The People Deserve Beauty” loads of times and told us about Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty and the line of beauty while she did it. I didn’t know any of those references. How did he navigate it, the forcible switch from observer to observed? “I don’t know if I did navigate it. Fame in our times has taken the place of heaven in past belief systems. You think that your life’s a bit drab or it’s not really working, but if you’re famous you’d be at the front of the queue, you’d be at the best table, all this kind of paradise. So to experience this thing that’s got this weird belief system around it – and also this belief system you’ve constructed yourself – it’s never going to be what you thought. I didn’t end up in the telly.” He pauses to consider. “To turn your nose up at it doesn’t seem right because you do want people to engage with what you’re doing. But it’s the other bits. It’s the being observed part that wasn’t so good. I prefer to be furtive.” We sent up daily food deliveries to ICU staff at six local hospitals and also set up a food bank at a primary school using money from the T-shirt sales. Honestly, if you can throw a rave, you can throw a food bank. There are certain things, like the way he stands, and I saw him on stage and he did this funny thing with his mouth, which I think I do. I don't think he's as shy as I was, which I'm glad about. I was ridiculous in the shyness stakes. I set myself a goal as a parent to make him mix with other kids as much as possible so he wouldn't have that. It hampers you if every social situation you're in causes you to panic. He does like his music, so that's like me. But then he's into drumming, which I never was. He chose that.

I don't get up in the morning and think, "Oh, look at you, you national treasure, you! You're really shiny today!" But it's nice. Everybody wants to be loved, don't they? Especially in the career that I chose: slight emotional neediness is part of it. My route so far through life hasn't been particularly logical, or even thought out. So I think that's a good message to the kids: that you don't have to follow the normal paths, you can be haphazard. I'm not really explaining it very well because it seems a bit self-congratulatory. But if you get recognised for what you do, even if what you do might be a bit all over the place, then… I appreciate that.

Other Issues

So there’s bad pop and good pop, hunger of all kinds and art as a consistent source of nourishment and pleasure. Several times he mentions that he’s trying to get better at relationships, rather than zoning out in front of the TV and putting all his feelings in a song instead. Clearing out the attic is part of a concerted effort to get to grips with old stuff, on an emotional as well as physical level: to change bad habits, to communicate more instead of escaping into fantasy. “Me ringing you this morning about the dog situation, that was a slight breakthrough,” he announces, surprisingly, “because a few years ago I would have just worried about it. The journey would have been an absolute nightmare. So then ringing, even though I wasn’t pleased about being late, at least I knew I’d dealt with it.” It's been yet another good year for Jarvis, what with the Pulp gigs, the launch of his book of lyrics, Mother, Brother, Lover, and the continued success of his 6Music show. Not that you'd know it: good year or bad year, Jarvis himself doesn't really seem to change. He's still thoughtful, still funny, still more low-key than you might think. He still comes out with answers that you don't quite expect. Well, no – because often the names will get changed. But I have had issues with people. One girlfriend used to punch me. I could see her point, because I do tend to be a bit closed off emotionally. You know when you get into that thing where people want to discuss the relationship? I'd rather discuss what was on telly, avoid the issue, discuss anything other than the relationship. And so this girl, quite rightly, found it a bit much that when she came to concerts you would get all this emotion splurged out on the stage. Her phrase was, "The only time I find out what's on your mind is if I come to one of your concerts." All I can say in my defence is that I wasn't really doing it in a snidey way. I didn't grow it to hide anything, I grew it out of neglect. I was at somebody's house and I had no access to shaving facilities for a couple of weeks. I got over the itchy bit, and I thought I'd give it a go. I was horrified to see that it had quite a lot of grey in it. But then you have to get used to the fact that you're getting to a certain age. I've had it for two and a bit years now.

The unfortunate side effect is [the authorities]can then bring in all these draconian things, like when there was a student march the other week. They let slip: "Oh, yeah – we might have some rubber bullets" or "We might get the water cannon out." When there is something that actually has an agenda, not just "Oh, I want some trainers", that's going to get stamped on. I went on that march and I was amazed, because there were as many police as there were people marching. It was crazy. Re X Factor, Jarvis "took a position" after last year's series, where the contestants murdered David Bowie's "Heroes" on one show, the performance culminating with the stage opening up, "and all these soldiers walked on. Because it was for heroes. Like suddenly we're in a totalitarian state. I just thought, that's it, I'm out." Still, he does sneak a look now and then: "I do like Gary Barlow's 'It. Was. Absolutely. Fantastic. I am going to keep my head in this position because I have been told I look good on camera like this.'" JC: In your last collection you had a Lucozade dress and that really chimed with me. Lucozade used to be something you took to ill people in hospital and it wasn’t until I went to raves when I moved to London that I encountered people who drank it because they’d been up all night. Without them, Lucozade would have died as a product. Do the subjects of your songs know they've been written about? And if so, how do they feel about it? I'm thinking about Susan (" Inside Susan") and Deborah (" Disco 2000 "). (Child of the Nineties, online) This is quite an unusual vision of creative success for a teenage boy, I suggest. “I wasn’t just saying I wanted a yacht and loads of money. I was saying: ‘Yes, we’re going to change the structure of society.’” He laughs ruefully. “Nice idea.” He’d always aimed high. As a child, his career goal was astronaut, superseded post-puberty by pop star. For a shy, lanky kid with glasses and bad teeth, forming a band was a way of being in a gang. “And I really wanted to have friends.”Jeremy Deller: I think that’s what being an artist or a musician is: trying to make sense of things around you that you’re not happy about or that confuse you. You make art or music to deal with it, which is a very similar impulse. In the book he describes trying to provide some kind of sex education for his own adolescent son, to the mortification of both parties. It worries him, the fact that sex and life have become so severed. “Because what you’re dealing with is you get those feelings, those instincts, at a certain age and they are strong feelings and you’ve got to deal with them in some way and if there are no clues except some kind of foul thing online where you start to think of people as objects, and why aren’t I getting my sex that I was promised – or whatever, I don’t know what those people think.”

Does the phrase "national treasure" make you gag or feel proud? (Screwdriver Cat, online at theguardian.com) From doing work experience at a record shop in Colchester I saw from the older kids how to build my escape route: college, get a student loan, go to uni. I did a music production HND at Sussex uni. I didn’t finish, but I put on my own parties in Brighton, started a record label and worked in pirate radio. That’s where the name Jonny Banger comes from. Starting Pulp was a way too of alchemically transforming everyday existence into a more fantastic version. Several times in our conversation he touches on his persistent desire to live inside the TV, a zone of adventure populated by dinosaurs, Daleks and the Monkees. “I realise that image doesn’t work so much now because TVs are just flat screens. But when they were boxes you kind of thought – what’s in it? You could almost imagine fitting inside it.” We also have a long talk about the press, and the Leveson inquiry. "Tabloids invoke freedom of speech, but they're not interested in that, they're just interested in who's shagging whom, who's got drunk. And if you take that pretend, faux moral standpoint, you end up with people in public life being completely boring. Like they've had their genitals removed." Jarvis isn't interested in who celebrities are shagging: "People might be a bit iffy, but that's between them and their conscience. I grew up in Colchester. My mum was a psychiatric nurse and she got ill with leukaemia when I was 13 and died when I was 15. Then it was just me and my brother in the house. He was 18 and became my guardian.The original battle lines over capitalism were a bit simpler. It was that the people who make these things are getting paid peanuts and then the things are sold for a lot more and it was exploitation. But there's no actual product now, is there? Capitalism has gone very abstract – so it's harder to say who the enemy is.