Heaton, now in his sixties, has reached the ‘respected elder statesman’ era of his career (Gareth Paisey of Los Campesinos! regularly cites The Beautiful South as his favourite band), but the barbs have become no blunter. While much of N.K. Pop is firmly in the tradition of radio-friendly pop, it’s the lyrics that give these songs their extra dimension. Heaton I was pretty mouthy when I was younger. I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime. As we can see from the current climate, we’re groomed for serfdom. For two years, people like GB News have told us we’ve been brainwashed about masks, but we’re now gleefully falling for a much bigger brainwashing scam. It’s highly amusing, but not so amusing when you’ve got a record on the playlist and now they won’t play it [after the Queen’s death] because it’s too uptempo! Do you think your anti- royalist, anti-Tory credentials have cost you in terms of sales over the years? Hibernica

Abbott is very much the junior partner in their double act. Heaton himself has a beautiful plangent voice, to which Abbott’s lovely tone and timbre is perfectly matched, so that she effectively sounds like a female version of the frontman. They harmonise delightfully, and occasionally Abbott takes the lead, or provides a second character for split narrator interactions. This approach shines on Baby It’s Cold Inside, a punchy zinger about sexual harassment, but proves confusing on Too Much for One (Not Enough for Two), a song written from a singular perspective then artificially divided in two. In the 2018 Channel Four documentary Paul Heaton: From Hull To Heatongrad, its then fiftysomething subject confesses to fears that he’s run out of things to write about. I do think those newspapers are on their way out,” the self-declared socialist tells us, referring to the unblushingly political Sunny Side Up. Although he’s primarily a storyteller, Heaton does delve into more personal songs this time round, sometimes with devastating effects. Still is easily the highlight of the record, a beautiful ballad about miscarriages and still births. Lines like “still feel your heartbeat, the tiniest drop…your departure destroyed us but we’re so glad you could come” are stark, poignant and affecting.I can get myself together to speak at a funeral,” confides Heaton. “In that way, I’m not a crier, but obviously I’ll get upset and I also cry at unusual things – the BBC1 daytime soap Doctors often gets me roaring.” I didn’t want to make it particularly about any stage in the birth or after – or even an infant, I just wanted to write about loss.” It's always been my ambition to have a football song adopted [on the terraces] and Rotterdam was adopted by Liverpool fans originally, I think. So I like that, it’s good fun. I always say to my daughter, ‘Ooh, I'm on telly!’ when the football is on. I refer to football in my songs occasionally, but I wouldn't write a football song. I wouldn't know what to write about really. But maybe if Sheffield United got to Wembley in April…” There’s no mention of Portugal, or indeed Germany or Holland on N.K-Pop. Like the Paul and Jacqui albums before it, as well as Heaton’s four solo records and his crateful of Housemartins and Beautiful South long-players, this one feels as British as a battered sausage. Earlier this year Heaton spoke to NME about how he and Abbott had played a number of free concerts for NHS staff as a thank you for their efforts throughout the COVID pandemic. He also discussed giving away free pints at 60 UK pubs to mark his 60th birthday, and why he thinks the British Royal Family should be privatized.

Too Much For One is another example of a great conversational/argument songs between yourself and Jacqui. How would you define the chemistry the two of you have?

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Heaton didn’t actually go to any of those pubs on the day itself, instead enjoying a quiet lunch out with his wife. Come Saturday, however, Paul took a leaf out of the late Queen’s book and had himself a street party. Heaton It wouldn’t be a giggle for me and you can’t sing Flag Day and then reform for charity. We did reform for an interview 10 years ago, which was lovely. I love spending time with them and we’re all really good friends. Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott will release their fifth studio album ‘N.K-Pop’ on EMI on 30th September 2022. ‘N.K-Pop’ adds another clutch of deliciously barbed pop songs to Heaton’s Ivor award winning song collection. Paul & Jacqui’s previous album ‘Manchester Calling’ went straight to No 1 on its release in March ’20.

Do you think musicians and bands are more reticent about being overtly political nowadays than they were in the 80s and 90s? HilsLM Unsurprisingly, this received rapturous applause from Jacqui's home crowd and marked a special moment for the Sutton Heath singer - whose family and friends were all in attendance. I know it sounds funny to say but I didn’t have any problems with her passing,” he says, matter-of-factly. “She’d reached the age of 90 and she was still happily belligerent and argumentative and causing the nurses no end of bother in the hospital, which was fairly amusing. I once saw the Beautiful South support Pere Ubu on Morecambe Bay. Any chance of playing live on sand again? LeeBirch The production, courtesy of UK duo God Colony, is particularly great on Feel Alive, with the song’s sparkly synths towing the line between sugar trap and a casino-themed level on Sonic the Hedgehog. This beat inspires Flohio to wake up from a grief-driven slumber, as she tellingly pledges: “From the dead I have risen”.In narrative songs like The Good Times, how much of the story is mapped out in advance before you put pen to paper? People think, ‘Oh, he must have softened up, he’s writing these really nice soft songs about this and that,’ and then suddenly there’s this horrible one about the Government.” Great! I mean, I wouldn't say I'm outspoken, but certainly lyrically I've not reined it in much. There are never any editorial questions, they know what I'm like and I'm given an incredible amount of freedom. But then I suppose I've gained a little bit of the freedom through success. People don't really want to hear it - I think they want to paint the music industry as the devil, but everybody's all right from my experience.The Housemartins had been on the dole for two years. I think Hugh [Whitaker, drummer] had been on the dole for four years and we just wanted a wage and that's what we asked for. We didn't want big advances. I'm not making an album to buy a yacht, I'm making an album because I love music. And I've found gradually that more and more people I'm working with within the industry are doing the same.” Abbott Paul writes the songs with Jonny [Lexus, guitarist]. He goes somewhere very sombre or rainy to write the lyrics, then somewhere sunny like Spain to do the music. That’s why the lyrics can be dark or sullen and the tunes are lovely and flowing. I love seeing it happen and then helping bring it all to life. Bushell, Garry (29 September 2022). "Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbot – N.K-Pop album review". Daily Express . Retrieved 12 October 2022.

So, what’s the plan for 2032? Paul will be blowing out 70 candles then, but you feel that even that day will be celebrated with the giddy enthusiasm of someone turning 21. “Oh, I can’t tell you yet,” he teases, “but I’ve got a really good idea!” Not a lot, really, but there’s quite often one scene in my mind and it spreads from there. On this one, I had a really vivid image of a pub with a fireplace, and I fleshed it out by having a conversation with myself. I thought about what might have happened there, and the landlord running the place on his own after his wife has gone. Sometimes I think of a song as an unfinished crossword puzzle and it’s my jobThere’s laugh-out-loud moments and sometimes rage in the 12 songs here, with some oblique references to shamed ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson (“a clown on the box for which I did not vote”) and to some of the more splenetic tabloids and self-serving politicos (“​​Burn the Express and the Mail/ The key to real democracy/ Throw the Eton mob in jail”). I was amazingly surprised, but I had dipped my toe in the water on The 8th, a musical I wrote about the seven deadly sins and [Abbott] sang a little bit on that. And when she sang live, the whole room lit up. Clearly, people had really missed and loved her voice, and that's still the case. They do like me – I do get paranoid that they only like Jacqui! But she's got a voice that connects with people.” Still, it was something of a belated correction for the way The Beautiful South – never a critics favourite – have been somewhat airbrushed out of the 90s music story. “It feels a little bit like history’s been rewritten,” Heaton says. “We’d never be in one of those 200 best albums of the 90s lists. But we didn’t particularly sound or look like bands that you associate with the 90s. And it can be quite helpful not to have a sound that dated. It can be limiting if you sound like a band from the 90s. It’s though you’re doing a permanent revival”. Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott perform at the Royal Albert Hall (Photo: Christie Goodwin/Redferns via Getty) It’s three in the morning, the sun’s up, and there’s all these beautiful people in this halcyon moment,” he recalled earlier this year. “People are laying on the grass, making out, drinking, smoking. It was an incredible moment. When the world stopped [for the pandemic], I had this moment to write in real time, to calculate. I was compelled by this vision, this anomaly, this memory, of being under the midnight sun.” Heaton I still prefer to put it in songs or the odd humorous comment on stage. Social media is like Speakers’ Corner, everyone shouting at each other.