The Ordinary Boys are named after a The Smiths song. But which of your band’s tracks did Morrissey include on his ‘Songs to Save Your Life’ CD that he curated for NME in 2004?
“‘(Little) Bubble’.”
CORRECT.
“I think we were only on there because we were stroking his ego by calling ourselves The Ordinary Boys!”
“Alain Whyte [former Morrissey guitarist and songwriting partner]’s band are doing some gigs in California, where I’ve been living for the last three years, and I’ve been asked to sing for it – and be the Left-Wing Morrissey! Which is what I like to think of myself as these days anyway. Hopefully, I can fit it around my other commitments. Though I’m so disgusted by Morrissey’s politics, the music is deeply rooted in me and part of my life and musical journey – and I’m still proud of the tours we did with him. I’ve got a copy of ‘You Are the Quarry’ signed by everyone in the band, including Morrissey. ‘Vauxhall And I’ is a perfect record – and in competition for my favourite album of all-time.”
Moz cherrypicked The Ordinary Boys to play when he oversaw Meltdown Festival in 2004.
“We first played Later… With Jools Holland in 2004 with Morrisey and I was terrified. I went up to him and said, ‘Hello Morrissey, I’m Preston’. He replied: [adopts Moz’s withering tone] ‘Yes, I know who you are’. That was perfect! But he was very kind when we played with him. I never saw him to do any of these diva-ish things he’s sometimes accused of.”
“I feel Morrissey was a surrogate father figure in the way that he [his music] taught me about the world, and I don’t believe that I was misrepresenting his lyrics. I think he just soured. John Lydon too. As someone who’s spent his life loving punk, it’s unimaginable to see them go down that pipeline.”
An easy one: which frontman did you interview for a 2004 ‘Heroes’ issue of NME, where bands met their idols?
“We asked for Morrisey, but at the last minute, Franz Ferdinand decided they wanted him. So we had Paul Weller.”
CORRECT.
“Who was also great. He made me an amazing mixtape that opened my mind to Northern Soul. On our second album, ‘Brassbound’, we were trying to make music for an audience that had appeared based on that NME front cover. It was a difficult record for us to make and a strange one. We had started as a hardcore band, and then our first album ‘Over the Counter Culture’ was written in a week as ‘Let’s try a Britpop thing’. Although I’m still proud of ‘Brassbound’, it was coloured by us trying to make a record for a fanbase that we didn’t understand yet.”
Name either of the two characters you played, as a child, in the 1992 series Jim Henson’s Mother Goose Stories.
“I was the son of the King who bumped his head in one of them, and was I The Knave of Hearts?”
CORRECT. The show featured puppets mixed with child actors telling the stories behind nursery rhymes. You portrayed The Knave of Hearts in ‘The Queen of Hearts’ and ‘Prince Freddy’ in ‘It’s Raining, It’s Pouring’.
“We filmed all around Europe and with the money I earned from it, I bought my first electric guitar aged six. Without that, I would have never got into this mess! [Laughs] As a kid, I wanted to be a puppeteer and would make my own silicone puppets and moulds. I auditioned for other Jim Henson projects. I almost got Muppets Treasure Island, and I also auditioned for The Witches as the main kid – and got close to getting it.”
In the 2007 film Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is heard in the common room of which of the four houses of Hogwarts?
“I have no idea. My six-year-old nephew would be very upset with me for getting this wrong! Slytherin?”
WRONG. Gryffindor.
“I’ve never seen the film. When they came out, I was in my real asshole rock-star mode and would say, I’m an adult and those books are for children, so I won’t engage. Lots of things I said during that era, I wouldn’t stand by, but that I probably would! [Laughs]”
What horror creature did Cher dress as when she performed ‘Dressed to Kill’, her cover of your 2009 solo single, on her 2014 tour of the same name?
“A vampire?”
CORRECT. Similar to your vampire-themed 2009 promo video.
“Every now and then, I think I should have released the solo album but I don’t know what was going on then. I keep threatening to throw the whole unreleased record up on SoundCloud and I might do it soon.”
One of its tracks, ‘Heart Skips a Beat’, ended up as a UK chart-topper for Olly Murs in 2011.
“A few of those songs got placed in the end and it led me to the journey of songwriting which has been the best thing that ever happened to me.”
You’ve written for the likes of Kylie and Jessie Ware. Any tracks you’re proudest of?
“There’s a song I did called ‘Pookie’ by the K-pop band FIFTY FIFTY which I think is really good, and another I think is great is ‘Is It Really Me You’re Missing?’ by Nina Nesbitt, which Rihanna was going to sing at one point.”
You also co-wrote the late Liam Payne’s 2019 cut ‘Live Forever’.
“The wild story about that is I’d had an accident [in 2017] where, because I was drunk and took too many Ambiens, I fell off a fourth floor balcony and nearly died. I broke every bone in my body. I wrote a song about it, ‘Live Forever’, at a songwriting camp a year after the accident. Liam heard it and ended up cutting it. The whole song is about me falling off this balcony and nearly dying. Then obviously what happened to him happened…”
In 2024, Payne died at the age of 31 after falling from a third-floor balcony at a hotel…
“It was an absolute gut-punch – a horrible thing that happened. I would go round to his flat and we would write songs and all the lyrics would be about how difficult he was finding everything. Sometimes being a songwriter is like a therapy session.”
When you appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2006, in a task involving the 11 housemates ranking themselves in order of fame, what number did you place yourself as?
“I reckon I would have put myself quite low. 11? Or ten?”
CORRECT. Tenth. Maggot from Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin Chain was 11th.
“With Big Brother, I genuinely believed that I could get inside the machine and control it from the inside. I didn’t realise how vapid and ridiculous the world of celebrity is, so I think maybe indie and the mainstream are never meant to combine. Maybe they are milk and orange juice – and that’s a good thing. Part of me being a songwriter for the past nearly-20-years was to prove that I could be a successful musician without having to be a ‘celebrity’ or even put my name to a project.”
Can you name the audience member “lookalike” who replaced you when you famously walked off an episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2007?
“No idea.”
WRONG. Ed Seymor was brought out of the audience after host Simon Amstell sneeringly read extracts from your then-spouse Chantelle Houghton’s memoir Living the Dream.
“I was always confused about why everyone was angry with me sticking up for my wife, who was in the audience, to this posh guy. It was classist punching-down. If it happened now, people would be horrified, so I stand by it.”
“It was a turbulent time. The chaos and cruelty of the media at that time affected me. My phone was being hacked which made me suspicious of everyone. The papers would print, say, a picture of me and say: ‘Here’s Preston looking fat today’. It was just sniping and sadly, enough people have killed themselves because of it since then that people are starting to think that maybe it isn’t nice to hurl abuse at people in the papers and across the internet. I still feel we’ve got a long way to go – it feels very medieval out there.”
You’ve written songs for K-pop titans TOMORROW X TOGETHER, including ‘Higher Than Heaven’. Name all five of their band members.
“Nope! [Laughs] I could with some of the K-pop bands, but TXT, I only know them as a unit. I do like them and I really like the stuff I’ve done with them.”
WRONG. Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun, Hueningkai.
“I’m ADHD, so writing K-pop songs suits me because it moves from one section to the other very quickly.”
What was the name of your “voodoo deity” from your 2007 Channel 4 documentary The Beginner’s Guide to Voodoo?
“Fuck! I wish I could remember that. When I’m with people who don’t know me as Preston from The Ordinary Boys, one of my favourite things to say is I’m ordained as a voodoo priest! [Laughs] At that time, I would suddenly find myself doing things like this, not remembering to having agreed to them.”
WRONG. Your own voodoo deity was called Mamicica, who liked flowers, biscuits, perfume and tobacco.
“I wouldn’t have remembered that in a million years!”
In which sitcom does Matt Berry’s character look at a CD of yours and boggle: ‘The Ordinary Boys? Where do they get these crazy names?!’’
“The IT Crowd.”
CORRECT. The scene, involving Berry’s character Douglas Reynholm, appears in the series 2 episode ‘Smoke and Mirrors’.
“I met Matt Berry in what used to be the Ace Hotel London Shoreditch, and he was surprised at my knowledge of British comedy! Gavin & Stacey also referenced us, which was funny.”
Now, after a ten year hiatus, The Ordinary Boys are back with a new single ‘Peer Pressure’.
“It was purposefully like: ‘Let’s write an Ordinary Boys song in 2026 and see what it would sound like’. It’s heading towards an album, which we’ve already recorded half of. Lyrically, I’m curious how far I can push it in imagining what The Ordinary Boys’ ‘Over the Counter Culture’ would sound like in 2026. We were a political band with social commentary. Now we have the manosphere, the alt-right pipeline, billionaires. AI – the world is a much richer place with things to be pissed off about. For humanity, that’s bad news, but for The Ordinary Boys, it’s good because it means we can write lots of songs!”
Bonus question! For an extra half-point: Mr Blobby features in the video to The Ordinary Boys/Olly Murs festive 2025 single ‘Christmas Starts Tonight’. How many weeks did Mr Blobby’s self-titled 1993 novelty single spend at Number One in the UK charts?
“He was the Italian brain rot of the ‘90s, so five?”
WRONG. Three.
“Next time he releases a single, he has to do better! The guy inside the Blobby suit is a big Ordinary Boys fan and brought his Blobby-guitar and we jammed afterwards. They say never meet your heroes, but in that instance, it worked out perfectly!”
The verdict: 6/10
“If that was a Rotten Tomatoes score, I don’t think I would go and see the movie!”
The Ordinary Boys’ new single ‘Peer Pressure’ is out now. For full band tour dates, see here.
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