SCRITTI POLITTI
Oh Patti

-- Smash Hit, June 1988

"I've never actually known a woman called Patti," muses Green Gartside from Scritti Politti, "so this song isn't about a specific person at all. I suppose on the surface it's about the end of a relationship but really it's to do with faith -- faith in the world in a way, faith in the sense of knowing the truth about the world, be it in a political way or in a religious way or in any other way...That all sounds terribly pompous, doesn't it?"

Do you get the impression that this bloke called Green, the man who basically is Scritti Politti, is a bit of an intellectual type, viewers? Well he is...a bit, anyway. One minute he's raving about the new Tiffany single and asking lots of questions about her ("What's she really like? Is she happy? Is she a bright girl?") and the next he's rattling on about his favourite painter, some bloke called Marcel Duchamp ("a cool dude -- he was a very radical artist in the '20s, then one day he just decided to give it up, he thought 'sod this, I'd rather play chess all day' so that's what he did.") Aye, he's an odd fish and no mistake. But who is he? Where did he spring from? And why the devil is he called Green? Well...

He was born in South Wales 31 years ago and one day when he was 16 he decided he was a bit bored of his "very ordinary" christian name (which he refuses to "reveal") and so he called himself "Green" instead. "I was on a train somewhere and I decided that the first thing that came into my head would be my name. So I was looking out of this train window in the middle of summer and everything was totally green and so that was it. It's a ridiculous name isn't it?"

After being Green for a couple more years in South Wales he trooped off to Leeds Polytechnic to study "the philosophy of art history" and became a punk rocker. "I was completely into being a punk -- it was my life. I lived in a squat, went to gigs every night, wore bondage trousers with red, green and gold stripes down them, the lot."

He then formed his own group called Scritti Politti: "The name of the group came from a book I was reading at the time called Politician Writing by an Italian communist called Antonio Gramsci and the title was written in Italian on the inside page Scritti Pollitici. I decided to take the 'ci' off the end so it was Scritti Politti, a bit like that old song 'Tutti Frutti'. So the really the name means 'political writing' which I agree is a funny name for a pop group."

After being a punk for a couple more years he decided it would be much nicer to make proper pop records instead so he started inventing tunes like "The 'Sweetest Girl'", "Wood Beez" and "The Word Girl" and became a pop star!

He's not very happy at the moment because he's "completely penniless" and the hot water isn't working in his house so he has to boil lots of pans of water to have a bath.

And there you have it.