Pah! She does really! Because even rock 'n' roll rebels want to be rich and famous and adored by everyone. It's why Wendy James and Transvision Vamp have made a brand new LP packed with thrilling tunes! "So...er....tell us about the new album then," whimpers William Shaw.

Singer Wendy James and the Vamp's songwriter Nick Christian Sayer are sitting back-stage before a concert on their UK tour. It's a scene not unlike the sleeve of their second LP "Velveteen". As Wendy says: "It's quite nice, because there on the sleeve we're in the dressing room and when you take the record our of the sleeve there we are performing for you." But in today's dressing room, Transvision Vamp are actually in a somewhat grumpy mood. They're not altogether sure whether they want to tell the Smash Hits viewers all about their new LP at all, so it takes a couple of minutes to coax a few words from them....

Wendy: (A little disgruntled at the concept of talking about her song) We wrote it on the road, performed it live, it was a real classic live so we recorded it and that's the first single. I don't care if people like this song or this album, I like it. The fact that people liked this song is a bonus.

Does my voice get sore from all the balling I do in this song? Oh no, my voice is tough. Do I use honey and lemon? No, honey and lemon is a bit of a fallacy. What I do use is royal jelly with a bit of ginseng mixed in it.

Wendy: It's about tossy journalists. Numerous journalists have said that Wendy should sod off and die and our songs are crap, and so here we are doing a sell-out tour, about to do a world tour, but just so long as those journalists know that they were wrong. Can I just say one phrase? Success is credibility, credibility is success. The rules are there are no rules. That's important, right?"

Nick: It's a brilliant live song because it is a kind of anarchistic noise thing.

Nick: I really like this. It's about people who've all been famous and just by being famous they've been sold. All those people were ultimately products, yeah?

Wendy: Elvis, Marilyn, Billy The Kid, Jackie Onassis, Morrissey, Madonna....(all mentioned in the song) I just love the sentiment of it. They're icons, they're brilliant, they're fantastic, they're talented, they're brilliant to read about. And so many people have side, "Oh poor Wendy, she doesn't realize that she's being exploited by her record company, they told her to sit on the cover of Tatler (when Wendy posed semi-naked) and that's just a load of crap because I'm 23 years old and I know what I'm doing. no one is exploiting what I'm doing. No one is exploiting me!

Nick: Yeah, "Bad Valentine", because.....ha ha, um....it was Valentine's Day and Wendy didn't get any Valentine's cards, and I didn't give her one either and she was really pissed off about it.

Wendy: I wasn't really pissed off! I didn't get any Valentine's cards and Nick was meant to send me one and he didn't. He got one and I tore it up before he could see it because I was jealous and I said to him "Nick you're a bad valentine." So he went "Wow! You're such an inspiration!" and went and wrote a song. I really love Nick. I tell him that a lot. I'm proud of him. He's written such a brilliant album. I wouldn't be here without him. And he wouldn't be here without me. And that's something no one seems to mention, that all of this is born out of solidarity and love of music and love of each other. That's the best thing I can say about it, is that we genuinely care.

Nick: Jamie Reid, who used to do our artwork, sent us a letter after "I Want Your Love" got in the charts, saying well done and everything, and at the bottom he signed it "Jamie. Pay The Ghosts" - and we thought it was a really good line. The song isn't about Jamie though.

Wendy: To me it's a scene from Performance - it's my favourite film (odd psychedelic film about a decadent ex-pop star played by Mick Jagger). James Fox is collecting money from snidey little devious businessmen and he walks up to them saying, "You better watch your step because if you step out of line one more time you're going to get your head kicked against this wall." That's what "Pay The Ghosts" is about, you know? If you mess around too much, you get hurt. Like Carl Fysh did from Brother Beyond. He crossed us one time too many. In your magazine as it happen, he wished I was under a bus. It would have been a lot of bad, bad, bad karma for him. I don't think I've ever even wished Kylie under a bus, so it was a bit steep, wasn't it?

Wendy: Velvet curtains. The curtains of life. Political parties are curtains. They block out reality. The only thing that shows you the truth is a mirror.

The idea came from Blue Velvet, from David Lynch filming through the pretty white fences, birds tweeting in the trees, the happy housewife and then he goes underneath the ground and you see the worms and the cockroaches and whatever and they're all eating each other, and that's how the planet really works. Behind every facade there's a bit more evil, isn't there? All young children grow up thinking the world is beautiful then they grow up and find it's a sordid, perverse, bitter, twisted place. But don't get me wrong. I'm an optimist.