Scritti Politti

-- Smash Hits, 1991

Meet GREEN. He's a delicate sort. He's been a pop star for over ten years, except for most of that time he's either been going bonkers or hiding in a pub. And now WILLIAM SHAW is making him feel a trifle unwell...

Of all the pop stars in the world, Green Gartside is the most completely unsuited to his profession. He is allergic to being a pop star. For a start, the man who had just had a hit with The Beatles' song, "She's A Woman" is shy. That's why he hides behind the curious name of Scritti Politti.

"I certainly haven't got the self-confidence or chutzpah to be a solo singer," he confesses.

Green, a polite, pleasant sort of bloke who talks rather hesitantly and smokes rather too much, lives in the back of beyond in South Wales. There he pretends to himself that he isn't a pop star, and spends weeks doing little else but going for walks and playing darts in the pub. Frequently, in fact, Green claims to completely forget that he is a pop star at all.

You see, the job of being a pop star actually makes him feel ill. Scritti Politti started in the late '70s making scratchy, experimental punk records. But by the mid-'80s Green had turned to making rather slick and sophisticated dance LPs like the successful "Cupid And Psyche '85", which got the critical thumbs up all-round. Two years later he gave us "Provision", then, as was his wont, he disappeared.

"When you have a record out, you have to do promotion. You have to go round radio stations and sit through your own records," complains the 34 year old Green. Even his own records make him feel terrible: "It got awful. In the end, every time one came on I was sweating violently. In the end, I couldn't do it..."

All this pop star business resulted in him getting poorly, contracting various physical ailments and having to check into hospital with "exhaustion". This time he also "forgot" to give his record company his phone number, so they couldn't ring him up and say, "Where's the next LP then?" If it wasn't for the fact that an old chum, Martyn Ware, asked him to contribute to an LP of cover versions "Music Of Quality And Distinction II" (yet to be released), we'd have heard nothing of Green for yonks yet, because he'd have still been down the pub playing darts.

But now, what's this? He's having a proper hit. He's having to give up pretending he's not a pop star. Predictably, here he is again, looking rather uncomfortable. And, what's worse, the whole process is making him feel poorly again. "I don't feel at all well," he says. "I think I've got bronchitis."

Oh dear.