“I HATE people 'cos people hate me.” – A line from an Anti-Nowhere League song.

Chris: “We had nothing else to do so we started the band up about a year and a half ago.”

Winston: “We were in Tunbridge Wells and pissed off with the area, there was nothing happening, we were just bored and it seemed like a laugh. We did a few local gigs then a mini tour up North with the Damned and took it from there.”

Chris: “We saw them at the Bridgehouse and bribed them to take us along, it just escalated from there.”

Winston: “NEMS (the agency) carne and saw us at Wakefield and chucked us in at the Lyceum, the first Apocalypse thing. We're not used to doing interviews, we don't know what to talk about or how to act cool and say the right things really. You'll probably write it up like all the others saying how you got to the gig on the train and had a pork pie on the way.”

Chris: “Or ‘he growled menacingly over a cat, the cat winked at me and I left the room’, ha ha ha, or 'we exchanged snorts' he he he. You ask questions and we'll answer.”

Bugger! There goes my projected introduction to this feature. There is nothing else for it than the unprecedented step of revealing the true nitty gritty, a factual account of the interview exactly as it happened.

Seriously though, with the Anti Nowhere League, there is no need for the usual journalistic frills that force a routine dialogue to sound entertaining. The League (and they'll be rolling round on the floor at this) really are interesting people with something to say (although you may not agree with all of it).

I'd seen them supporting The Dead Kennedys at the Lyceum. My first impressions were gross in the extreme. The singer had longish hair, shades and an unappealing waistcoat and seemed repulsively self-obsessed. Later, as the set rolled on, I surmised that they were on a kamikaze audience wind up mission of such vile extremes it became enjoyable.

One audible lyric was the snippet quoted beforehand. Another song rang: ‘Roll on World War Three, we're burning all the rubbish of society’.

I discovered their names: the singer's called Nick, the guitarist Chris, the bass player Winston and the silent drummer is John.

Our chat continued... Do you really hate people?

Winston: "I hate people 'cos people hate me, that’s just an expression. Say you’re trying to get a move on and the woman in front of you in the supermarket won't let you pass. You feet a certain amount of hate inside. It's just a word for that. Contempt for people who muck you abut.

"People love to be hated. People might say they're pacifists and that they love everybody but really they hate everyone. If someone falls over you still put a boot in their face, don't you?

"People come and listen to our music and enjoy it, we enjoy it too. It's as simple as that really.”

So what about World War Three?

Winston: “The song does get to people and upset them, doesn't it? You wouldn't have remembered it otherwise. What about 'Sexual Perversion', do you remember that one?"

Nick has yet to utter. Winston and Chris decide that it is time he did. Heads turn in his direction.

There is a long pause and then a burst of rhetoric which he's obviously been saving up for this very moment: speaking into the tape recorder belonging to a grovelling hack from a national music paper.

"Our kind of music is different. People want to put us in categories where you're either this or this or that but we're not. We're just ourselves. We get fun out of music through hating people. I don't mean hating the audience because they're the people we're talking to really.

“It's the straights on the streets who ban you from everywhere saying 'We don't serve your type here' because we always dress this way and we always get slagged down. That's why we put the band together, to be anti nowhere, the name means what it says. Sexual perversions, alcohol and women and that's it. There are certainly no politics about it."

Chris: "We're just a straightforward band. We got together as a laugh and it happened from there. We never dreamt a year ago we'd be supporting The Damned on tour or playing the Lyceum. It was on a day to day basis, it still is. We live for the day.”

Nick: “We've travelled all, around the country. We've met all kinds of diseases, viruses, flus, ugly women. I've been hit in the face with bottles and glasses, dragged in the crowd, spat on, kicked, beaten, thumped ... and the power of your pen is the only thing that can destroy us.

“We've been through every shit in the last year. Because when you're the support band and unknown, the audience hate you, they want your blood. We've had nothing but shit... but that doesn't worry us... it's the power of your pen that worries us because you can destroy everything.

“People ask us about politics. We don't give a toss about them. It doesn't make any difference when you go into pub and they won't serve you, because you don't comb your hair or your jeans are halfway up your legs, of they don't like the woman you're with. Politics will never change that and they're the people I hate. Mr Straight on the street.”

Winston: “Why we're called Anti-Nowhere League is because people Iike that are nowhere, they've got a negative attitude.”

Nick: “They just spend their lives doing things they don't like and they're small minded. In England I can go into any pub and get into a fight immediately because someone won't like what I'm wearing. You can be nice to someone but they'll still come and kick you in the head if they don't like you."

Chris: “We've contempt for the whole human race and its small mindedness."

Winston: "All in all we've not had a bad reception on this tour. Plus our record isn't out for two weeks. It's a double A side. 'Streets Of London.', and 'So What’ on WXYZ Records. It's a version of the old 'Streets Of London' which was the first cover we did. It's got a new meaning now. If you walk the streets of London some of the things you see really make you sick. We thought it would be a good song to do, ballsed up a little and with a few word changes."

Nick: “It's got 'knickers' in it now. And ‘plastic bag’.”

Chris: “‘So What’ is about the people who sit in a pub, drink four or five pints, then tell you all the things they've done or what they're going to do but what they'll never really do. The people who look at the world from the bottom of their beer glass."

Winston: “Their life revolves around getting home from work, going down the pub, telling a few stories, picking a fight with anyone who looks different, going home, going to sleep and going to work again the next day.”

Chris: “Our dreams become reality. When I was young my heroes wore always people in rock bands and speedway riders. Now I've done both those things and I'm looking for a new dream, something I can go out and do rather than just sitting back, We wanted a band so we just went ahead and did it. Winston learnt bass and twenty songs in four days. That shows his commitment."

Chris later confesses his new dream! To be Worzel Gummidge. “A real social outcast," he calls him.

Winston: “It may appear to you that we're taking the piss but it's the way we feel.

"We enjoy what we do. We are the League.”