Kind of back to childish thing, you know, letting your childlike wonderment out.

Yeah exactly, and not afraid to look like a tit because that is my one bug-bear with contemporary music is that everybody seems mortally afraid of looking foolish so they don’t do anything interesting, and that’s all I’ll say on the subject!

Who do you like at the moment?

Hmmm… slim pickings… MGMT, Villagers….. Thinkthinkthink…

Ok. What are the touring plans for this LP?

A lot of festivals over the summer around Europe. I’ll be playing at Kilruddery house in Bray, I shall be playing the Earagail Arts Festival, Galway Arts Festival. I’m doing V in England and Belladrum Festival in Inverness, and then numerous ones around France and Spain.

Are you bringing a band?

No. Me and a piano for the entirety of this album campaign. There’s a few different reasons. Basically, I had thought about doing it for years because a lot of people I admire have done it, like your Noel Cowards and Randy Newmans and Ben Folds. I enjoy the sort of -Evening with..’ style – the fact that I can break off in the middle of a song if I fancy, I can chat to the audience without musicians tapping their watches beside me. Add to all these artistic judgements there are the sort of practical and financial ones as well. The practical problem is that now it’s released on our own label, there’s an awful lot of other things to do and look after and I have less time. You need time to rehearse another band and make it sound good. I could have done it but it would have made so many things intense and awkward and, you know, I’m getting on and I don’t need the hassle. And the financial issue is it’s expensive making records, especially when you don’t have a record company to dole out the cash.

How has the transition to independence been?

Largely positive. We got to number 20 in the UK with this album, which is about ten places higher than the last album did on a major label with about a twentieth of the outlay on promotion. When you’re doing it yourself you see where all the money was wasted and you just do the things that are going to make an impact. I have to pay huge homage to my manager and label company and Natalie who does the job of about 20 or 30 people but much better than those 20 or 30 people.

Thom Yorke recently said the industry is about to implode. What do you think?

I think it has imploded and we’re all sort of crawling from the wreckage. I’m no expert, I get rather bored by the whole talk of how to squeeze money out of it because it makes it sound very workmanlike and not very artistic. But what a lot of people forget is that if you want musicians and bands, you’ve gotta pay em! They can’t just sit around in squalor making lovely music for everyone else. I’ve done ten albums and I’m not a wealthy man – you can blame that on many things I’m sure – but the fact that about a quarter the amount of albums in general are sold as 10/15 years ago is just insane. Now you can put that down to a couple of things. Obviously people downloading them for free doesn’t help, but also I think people seem more interested in various other media and ways to enjoy themselves. I mean, back when I was a kid, music was everything! It was your identity; it was the first question you asked anybody else – what kind of music are you into? – and for some reason it just doesn’t seem to have that importance with kids these days. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope I’m wrong!

I think it’s nearly time to go Neil.

Well have you got one last profound question for me?

Hmm… What do you do in your spare time?

Sleep! These days it’s got to the point where spare time is used to somehow to try and relax. Basically a very large glass of wine and several episodes of 30 Rock and early to bed. But if I actually had spare time, what would I do? Problem is my job is sort of my hobby so I would just be writing, but at the moment there is no time so I’m not even writing. So I guess if I had spare time id just be doing my job, hilariously. Reading would be nice; at the moment I go to bed, open a book and fall asleep into the first page. I like jigsaws. I did the roof of the Sistine Chapel a couple of years ago. I will have spare time again, it’s just these things work in huge cycles.

That’s why I won’t ask you about the follow-up record.

That kind of makes me feel physically ill! I’m quite happy for another four year gap.

Bang Goes The Knighthood is out now on Divine Comedy Records