Later With Jools 11 May
There's a lot of music on this show this week from a lot of very talented people, one of them is from the manic street preachers, we welcome nicky wire.
Nicky is sat at the piano and looking at him, if you didn't know you'd think he was a girl, blue eyeshadow, baby pink sweatshirt and his hair...
Jools: welcome to our show.
Nichola: hello nice to see you again.
Jools: welcome back. How many times have we done this now, 3 times is it.
Nichola: I missed out once didn't I.
Jools: but you're back now.
Nichola: you wanted me on a hospital bed didn't you if I remember.
Jools: but we're very happy you're here in fullness now. Anybody that's getting yourself excited about in the room here.
Nichola: just makes me feel really bad cos they're all such good musicians and I'm like a dodgy punk who can hardly play.
Jools: doesn't matter, me too.
Nichola: it's all lovely, it's very spiritual tonight isn't it except for us making a racket in the corner.
Jools: I like that, you gotta have a knees up. Earlier on in the show you played Ocean Spray. Is that the first song that James has written the lyrics for?
Nichola: It is indeed yes.
Jools: what's that about then.
Nichola: It's about his mum, she was fighting cancer for a long time and ocean spray's a cranberry juice which they give you to fight cancer. It's a little tribute to her really, Sean plays the trumpet solo on it, on the record, Sean the drummer but he couldn't do both at the same time (me: but James could have played it acoustic then he could)
Jools: I had no idea that he was so multi-talented.
Nichola: he is, he's a very humble man. He makes up for all my inadequacies.
Jools is taken aback by Nicky's apparent lack of confidence (did this start with that Q review, if so, I think that person has more of a problem with Nicky because between the lines you could sense a grudge)
Jools: Stop going on about it, you haven't got any, er, inadequacies.
Nichola: I can jump higher than anyone else.
Jools: I don't believe that's true, come on then (starts to get up, Nicky grabs his arm to stop him)
Nichola: not with this dress on.
Jools: just testing.
Someone whistles.
Jools: Now you recently went to cuba.
Nichola: yeah.
Jools: to launch your record, why did you go there.
Nichola: I just wanted to do something really different, to push ourselves, because sony doesn't trade over there so it was just going into the unknown, we could have played in wales or london or something and played to a lot of people and made a lot of money but we just wanted to do something like a complete adventure and it certainly was.
Jools: did you meet Fidel Castro.
Nichola: yeah that's not the reason we went there but just before we went onstage we were ushered into a room by lots of serious looking people and he was there, met him the next day a couple of times as well.
Jools: what's the next song you're going to be doing.
Nichola: it's a track called Let Robeson Sing. It's about Paul Robeson, the american political activist. It's like a political love song, it's a song about someone who deserves to be known by the wider public. Besides being a fantastic voice and an entertainer he just tried to do the best thing all the time and that's quite a rare thing these days.
Jools: so you want the truth coming out.
Nichola: yes indeed.
Jools: in that case we look forward to hearing that in a moment. Thankyou very much Nicky Wire.
Nichola: thankyou.
