Although I agree it would be difficult to sneak up on someone while driving a Ford Transit.

Alex, yes they are. It’s weird because we’re too small to provide things like an advance or anything like that, but we pay for stuff that needs to be done – promo copies, manufacture, stuff like that – and me and the band will split any profits we manage to make.

I’d forgotten about the White Stripes though – good choice.

a) Probably “The Kick Inside” by the luuuuuurvely Kate Bush.

b) A Basisk wall lamp. But I do want to get one of their fabric storage boxes just so I can say to someone “You wanna come upstairs and see my Flört??”

c) Probably around 200 little Canadian dollars @ Stongs, our local grocers. We tend no tto do chains.

d) Do Vans count??

e) The King’s Arms, a rather divey bar with gobs of character, skanky service and surprisingly acceptable, if mysterious, brews. it’s definitely local – no chain would touch it with a bargepole.

this fairly innocuous incident has been whipped up into some national shame game & dominated the fucking NEWS for the last week or so.

You’re referring to the same – ahem – “news” outlets that spent the last year or so talking us all into an imaginary, fictional, totally make-believe global financial crisis, right?

2) A clothes drying rack thingammy. It’s all well and good having a pop at big corporations, but you leave Ikea out of this OK? OK? I think the loss of affordable, swedish-designed homeware would be my primary objection to Communism.

3) About 50 Australian dollars. Which, at the current rate, is around about 2p.

4) Dunlop Volleys for the win. No self-respecting indie kid is without them. And at 20 bucks a pop, no human being should be either.

5) Pugg Mahones, near my university. It’s one of those awful Irish themed pubs. But it has the redeeming feature of having cheap Guinness on tap and of generally being ever so slightly less awful than the other pubs near Melbourne Uni.