d20 Modern - Knightley Blues - First Update!

[wedgeski]

Hi folks. I thought I'd kick off my first attempt at a story hour with my homebrew d20 Modern campaign which has been running for a few sessions now.

Some background just before we start: I posted on a site called ukroleplayers.com about April last year (2004) on the off-chance that I'd be able to attract a couple of local players to a new game, since my regular amigos all live some distance away and we were only meeting to play about once a month. Also, I really wanted to broaden my horizons as a player/DM, and was looking to find a couple of DM's who would want to run their own games as well as join in with mine.

Well, it worked, and we successfully got to know two new players, both experienced RPG'ers, and great guys in their own right. Since that point we've been meeting semi-regularly once a week and playing three campaigns (Chaosium Cthulhu, MERP, and d20M) round-robin.

So, there's a lesson there about building new RPG groups and finding new friends, if you're looking for one.

(Please note that this is a 'mature' game which we play with quite a lot of profanity. I'll filter the swearing but some people may still like to know before we start.)

Game Background

This campaign is meant to be comfortable territory for anyone who likes X-Files, Alias, or any number of other modern TV shows ostensibly set in the real world, but where things seem generally out of whack, and where there's clearly something big going on just out of earshot.

Setting

This is a modern game set in the here and now, although game time is currently rooted in 2004.

The primary location for the campaign is the fictional UK city of Knightley Walls (usually referred to as just 'Knightley'). Knightley is a moderately-sized, 'new' British City founded in the 1950's as a model for modern urban development. Like many such experiments, it was only partially successful as a model for urban development, but wholly successful in creating a flat, featureless, homogenous concrete sprawl that seemed to depress everyone who ever set foot there. Steps were taken in the 70's to try to correct the problem, but half-hearted funding and a lack of overall direction led to a series of costly blunders and embarassing architectural 'forward thinking' which only served to make Knightley the butt of jokes which, before, no-one could ever actually be bothered to make at the city's expense. All that changed in the early '80's, as you'll hear about in the handouts below.

At this point the game has yet to expand beyond this location.

Characters

There are currently three PC's in the game (minimal detail here - I'll let their actions speak for themselves!):

Brianna Phoenix (Smart Hero). A no-nonsense, self-reliant criminal investigator with an offshoot of the British Secret Service known as SIGINT.

Frank Kane (Fast Hero). An ex-con whose past is a tangle of crime and deceit that even Frank can't make much sense of any more. Owns and runs a small bodyshop in Knightley.

Richard Harper (Tough Hero). Works for Frank Kane, a young man who has until now avoided the temptations of the criminal fraternity... much to his chagrin.

 

[wedgeski]

First Handout - The Geddes Report

Putting Up Walls
The Knightley Quarantine: 20 Years On

Margaret Geddes, one-time political correspondent for this magazine, takes a break from retirement to recall the events that shook the nation two decades ago, and which are now almost forgotten.

On June 2 1983, at five minutes past five on a sweltering summer afternoon, a small and unassuming press release filtered out of the governmental press office and landed on my desk. I ignored it at first, as I think most other journalists did in the accelerating madness of the approaching General Election. At about eight o'clock that night, however, as I took a coffee break and contemplated just how late I would be getting home to my husband, it rose at last to the top of the in-tray and demanded a little attention.

It quickly became clear to me, as I read those 150-some words, that I wouldn't, in fact, be going home that night at all.

This sensational story, that the small and uninteresting city of Knightley Walls had been quarantined by military police pending investigation into an "unidentified contagion", broke on front pages all across the country early the next morning. For myself, I put in no fewer than a dozen calls to government and military agencies to confirm its veracity, thinking that it must be a ploy to distract attention from the latest scandal to rock the election polls. Those calls, however, returned the same abrupt, no-nonsense answer: Knightly under quarantine, no-one in or out until further notice, emergency powers in place.

I recall the frenzy of the next few days with no little fondness. Of course, my primary business was Margaret Thatcher's impending landslide victory in the polls, but along with everyone else in the office, I pestered the Knightley crew for gossip every chance I got. It must be said that the sheer novelty of the story, at that time, got the better of our consideration for the poor 100,000 or so souls who had overnight became prisoners in their own homes, and these days I'm sure a more professional veneer would have descended on the office, but with the only news for so long being the election I'm not at all surprised that the story engendered so much energy in the hundreds of reporters across the country who investigated it.

I say 'investigated', but with equal surety I can say that never in this nation's history, before or since, has such an effective block to investigative journalism been erected by the government. Little-known (or I would warrant, believed) emergency measures gave the military police around Knightley supreme authority over both its populace and the security of the quarantine. Lengthy statements delivered to the press spelled out, in intricate detail, the consequences to life and limb should anyone try to enter or leave the city. (It was several months after the quarantine was imposed that the letter of these dictates would be tested, but I will come to that tragic episode later.) Suffice it to say that, for the first few months at least, long after the election was over and I had been handed responsibility for 'The Knightley Thing', as it became known in the office, we were reduced to publishing only the most superficial and speculative of articles. The story was gradually relegated down to somewhere in the dirty corner of page 14, left of the cricket scores and just underneath the latest celebrity marriage.

It's inevitable, I suppose, that as something evolves from the shocking to familiar, interest wanes. We were as guilty of that as our readership. Soon, the Knightley Quarantine was a fact of life, a fleeting thought on the way to the shops or a brief pause as one read the news, wondering whatever happened to 'that' city and 'those people' who lived there. Well I can tell you now, with the benefit of hindsight and the storm of interviews which followed, that life was hard for those people. Not third-world or war-torn hard, but hard nonetheless. Food and water were immediately rationed (I still recall the endless procession of homogenous green trucks which passed in and out of the military gate demarcating the end of the A303 and the start of the Knightley Quarantine Zone); a blanket 5pm curfew was imposed; and at first, even the television cables were cut. (In an uncharacteristic show of humanity for those left without Emmerdale Farm, they were, however, restored a few weeks later.) Inside, a person could hear of their plight on the Six O'Clock News, and look out of their window to see military scientists in stark white suits walking the street. One resident told me afterwards: "I'm not sure what was more frightening, the HASMAT men drilling into my rose garden, or the fact that no-one outside seemed to be talking about us any more." Initial unrest, demonstrations, and civil disobedience gave way almost preternaturally quickly to a siege mentality; in time, the residents' demands for information and news dissolved into a sullen wait for the fences to be lifted. I have even heard stories of the military police sitting down to ration-pack dinners with the folks they were guarding; the Helsinki Syndrome in full tilt, no doubt.

All that changed in October '83, when the first and only effort (to the best of this reporter's knowledge) to break the quarantine zone was staged. Three youths attempted to slip through the patrols in the boggy ground east of Knightley and make a bee-line for the nearby motorway. Amazingly, they passed unnoticed through three cordons (prompting speculation of military aid, though no news of any related arrests within the organization was ever released), and were only eventually stopped when one of them, the now-famous television pundit Brad Shoemaker, tripped and fell on the treacherous ground, fracturing his leg in three places. Giving up their escape attempt to help their friend (an act which has solidified the trio as heroes in the public consciousness), the two other youths, Matthew Cox and Mark Wensburgh, retraced their steps to the nearest military patrol. At that point, details become hazy. In what was claimed to be a terrible accident, both Mr. Cox and Mr. Wensburgh were shot and killed as they approached the guardhouse. The incident was quietly covered up at the time, but has become public knowledge in the aftermath, and the only statement released to explain the situation has been an excerpt of a transcript taken at a subsequent military hearing.

When asked why she opened fire, Corporal Denise Coombs stated that she ordered the approaching men to halt and identify themselves, but they did not. After brandishing in her direction something which looked like a firearm, and ignoring both her orders to stop and a single warning shot fired over their heads, she fired once at Mr. Cox. The bullet passed through his heart, killing him instantly. A private under her command, whose name has never been released, and who was also pointing his weapon at the two men, claimed to have fired reflexively at that point, a shot which hit Mr. Wensburgh in the left cheek. Mr. Wensburgh was reported to have died later in a mobile surgical hospital.

Many disputed facts render these accounts troubling. First, Mr. Shoemaker has strenuously denied, in many subsequent interviews, that any of them were carrying any weapons, and a sidearm entered into evidence at the military tribunal and supposedly found at the scene is, as far as he is concerned, an "egregious fabrication" (as he will tell you at length in the three best-sellers he has released on the matter). Secondly, the question of why his two friends ignored multiple warnings to stand down is also worrying, though it is possible that the adrenalin of the moment could have clouded their judgment. Thirdly, the fact that a low-ranking private under Corporal Coombs' command was given an automatic rifle, a weapon with which he would not have been familiar under normal military protocol, also raises suspicions. Mr. Wensburgh, at least, may have survived the confrontation if such lethal force had not been put in the hands of an obviously inexperienced soldier. As well as this, the bodies of both Mr. Cox and Mr. Wensburgh were never released to their families. Officially, they were destroyed in a later - accidental - fire at the on-site morgue.

It should come as no surprise that conspiracy theorists already attracted to the lingering mystery of the Knightley Quarantine fixate on this incident as 'proof' that there is far more to the story than the public has been told. Of course, at that time, as the winter of 1984 gave way to the burgeoning warmth of spring, we knew none of this. On the 2nd of May, 1984, a press release as unassuming as the one which had started the whole affair arrived on my desk declaring that the quarantine would be lifted in twenty-four hours. I have a copy of that press release in the clippings album which is the mausoleum of my forty years in journalism, and the impenetrable simplicity of its words still amazes me: After extensive investigation into the existence of a potentially hazardous natural emission in and around the location of Knightley Walls, Herefordshire, agents of the Environmental Protection Agency (UK 10657) have declared the site unconditionally safe and have given consent for the military quarantine, imposed June 2nd 1983, to be immediately lifted. The EPA and the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom express their deepest regrets at the severity of the actions taken, and wish the citizens of Knightley a safe and prosperous future.

Like that, the curtain was raised. A flurry of interviews and investigations exploded across the media in the next few weeks. Calls to official agencies were bounced back in our faces; no information was disseminated on the exact nature of the 'natural contagion' which may or may not have been on the site, though a few highly-placed spokespersons were heard to mutter the word 'radon' under their breath. This was, of course, the official explanation released a few months later, at the conclusion of the public enquiry. (I'm not lightly given to hyperbole, but this explanation has been soundly debunked by about seventeen million reputable scientists in the meantime.) However, whether it is due to the sheer thoroughness of the cover-up operation, or the simple fact that there is nothing else there to find, the failure of anyone to come up with a convincing alternative explanation for the events in Knightley has ensured that the official explanation is now the generally accepted one.

At first, like everyone else, I fancied that there must be a greater plot to these events and was given considerable mandate by my venerable (and now, unfortunately, deceased) editor to investigate the matter. You may have seen my three-part series later that year. I conclude now as I did then: 100,000 people were needlessly terrified for a whole year of their lives by the then-Government's panicked and knee-jerk reaction to a threat that turned out to be false. Several reputable Government agencies were equally guilty of abuse of power and breach of mandate, although it seems to me that in several instances it was simply a case of 'give them the muscle and they will use it'. That there were many, many thoroughly unpleasant politicians and civil servants at the heart of the whole mess only serves to infuriate me further. That road, however, leads to many phone calls from my editor in which the word 'libelous' would feature very prominently, so I won't go there. What became of far more interest to me in the aftermath, and which I now rather smugly claim to have played a significant part in changing, were the absurd and inscrutable powers wielded by the military to section off a portion of our nation due to a simple, perceived, and unproven threat. It is difficult to believe that today's culture of accountability would ever allow a display of such unilateral power to happen again, and for this I'm glad.

And what of Knightley? What at first seemed likely to be the ruin of the city (who would visit a place that had been quarantined for almost an entire year, no matter what the official reports said?), instead turned into a boon. A strange and unexpected political guilt seemed to manifest in Downing Street which resulted in millions of pounds of civic aid being pumped into the city over the next ten years. Now, with the quarantine mostly forgotten, folks around the country (and indeed around the world) know Knightley Walls as a center of contemporary culture, architecture, and business, a thriving metropolis which today nips at the heels of Manchester and Edinburgh in the race for the title of the United Kingdom's number two city.

I've been there a dozen times in the last few years, and I will be going again this summer for the rock festival which shakes the town's foundations one weekend out of every year. It's a lively and charming place.

I recommend you visit.

Margaret Geddes
15th June 2003

 

[wedgeski]

Second Handout - Shoemaker

Quarantine of the Soul: Prologue
by Brad Shoemaker

I know what you're thinking.

How can this insignificant little man possibly justify writing a third book on this? What more is there to say? For the love of God, aren't 340,000 words enough?!

And you'd be right. I can't justify it. Quite frankly, enough people have bought my books that I don't have to do a day's work for the rest of my life. I've featured in enough interviews and TV spots that my place in British history is, to all intents and purposes, assured. I've cauterized the unpleasant deaths of my friends not once but twice, and the wound shows no signs of infection. If anything, having at this for a third time is an exercise fraught with peril, for there's no better way to re-open an old injury than picking at the sutures. But I think there are more stories to be told about the Quarantine, more people to talk to, more unpleasant little truths to dig at and uncover. My celebrity has afforded me privileges over the last five years that I've never enjoyed before, and I've used that license to good effect. If you stick with me to the end, I've even got a surprise or two, I promise.

But for many reasons, this will be the last tome I write on the subject. Those reasons may not be what you think (and only one of them has to do with the fact that my publishing contract only extends to three books). Mark and Matt's families, for example, far from asking me to curtail this endeavour, have continued giving me the same ceaseless encouragement before, during, and after the writing process. The British Government, whose bluster over the publication of Quarantine Lifted almost twenty years ago came to little more than one press release and some rather feeble cease and desists posted to my flat, have actually, remarkably, surprisingly and altogether worryingly given me at least superficial access to what official reports on the incident still remain in civic filing cabinets. Even my editor at Rapid Books turned in as diligent and comprehensive a set of notes on this book as she did on the first (see dedication), when by all rights the very mention of the Knightley Quarantine should now be sending her into a comatose stupour in which she's haunted into infinity by the shadowy faces of three hundred and twelve anonymous sources (the number of unaccountable quotes in all three of my books; I counted them last night).

No, the main reason I'm bringing this to a close is more personal and, probably, far less interesting. I've now been obsessed with uncovering as much of the truth about those events as I can for almost twenty years. That's half of my life to this point. Over 7000 days. Everything I've said and done (or so it seems) for that entire period has revolved around the Quarantine in some shape or form, from the erecting of those grotesque green and yellow barriers at the end of the road where I lived with my parents and sister, through the shootings and all the legal horrors associated with that, through the first book and the unending interviews and publicity that followed, all the way up to now, two decades later, with these few hundred words of introduction. I have not one single enduring memory of anything unrelated to Knightley from that entire period.

That can't be healthy.

So it's time to stop. Just a few more things to say, a few more loose ends to wrap up or at least fold neatly away so no-one trips over them again, and I'll start the third book in my little trilogy by setting out the same stall I set out at this point in the first two books. Three questions that the following four-hundred-some pages will attempt, once again, to answer.

1. Why was a map of the KQZ posted through my letterbox on the morning of 5th October, 1983, and who exactly was my erstwhile postman?
2. Why did Corporal Coombs allow us to approach within twenty feet of the check-point, and then shoot Matt in the heart without warning or provocation?
3. Why did she order 'Private X' - a still-anonymous man wearing no army fatigues and carrying a high-caliber assault rifle - to shoot Mark in the face - and I quote - "before they give the f***ing thing to us as well"..?

Three questions which have exploded into a thousand others over the reason for the Quarantine and the actions of the military in the summer of '83. Let's see if we can't find a few more answers.

Brad Shoemaker
3rd April, 2003

 

[wedgeski]

Third Handout - Punkin' the Blues (Profanity Meter Set to High)

(Please note this post has more than its fair share of swearing, even for this game! Please don't read any further if it might be a problem.)

Punking the Blues
by Jennifer Malone

"We're here, we're pissed, we're making great music that people buy. Who gives a f**k about the past?"

I had debated the question for a long time. We were here to talk about their new CD after all. But, Christ, I'm only human. How could I resist? I doubt there's many of you reading this that wouldn't have wanted me to at least bring it up. Well I did, and that's all I got.

On with the show.

If the UK's most promising new punk rap quartet are in the least overawed by their fame, they don't show it. An hour late to the interview, unshaven the lot of them (even Amy Blue looked like she was sporting a five o'clock shadow), stinking to high heaven of booze, puke, and cigarettes, they fell into the Hilton's most expensive upholstery like they were collapsing onto their unmade beds after a night on the town. If the four pairs of bloodshot eyes, all looking like they'd rather be in rehab than talking to me, were looking a little glassy, and if the four sets of infamous blue-black spikes of hair atop their heads were looking a little, how can I put this, limp so early in the morning, their make-up however remained, as always, impeccable. Sporting the unblemished ashen-grey face paint which has become their trademark, there could be no doubt that I was in a hotel room with the Blueboys.

If I made a surreptitious show of hiding my little cup of Hilton Earl Grey under my notes, I'm sure you'll understand why. This was rock 'n' roll, not breakfast with the Queen.

The usual pleasantries were exchanged. Cigarettes were lit. Pitchers of - of all things - cider were ordered. The tape recorder turned. We started talking. The conversation was hard and loud, but these guys are surprisingly easy to talk to. Cogent, articulate, and with flashes of outright intellectualism, talking to any one of them is like talking to three people melded into one: the image, the music, and the soul.

You just played the last Manchester gig last night. How did it go?
Darren: Live is always new, always hard. It's like… Amy said it best the other night… You can get constipated in the studio, but your ass is to the wind when you're on stage. Whatever comes out flies. Anyway it was good, it was… got past a few things, got stuck on a few new things. It was good.

You left a lot of people angry when you didn't turn up at Hammersmith at the start of the tour. What happened?
Amy: Y'know, a lot of really very unpleasant s**t got said about that gig, a lot of really black-hearted people got in on it. Yeah, we f**ked up, but Christ we're not the second coming or anything, you know? Mistakes get made. We found out who our friends were, I'll say that.
Aaron: We were as pissed off about that as anyone else, and y'know, we did turn up, just a few hours late.

Yeah?
Aaron: That's right. We showed up at the stage door at 4 a.m. (laughs). I think we frightened the night security away. Anyway, they wouldn't let us in so we slept on the bus in the car park. Nice view from there.
Amy: If anyone with a ticket had still been there, we'd have set up in the car park and played the complete set, I guarantee it.

So what did happen?
Darren: Got drunker and higher than we should have the night before, simple as that.

Not for the first time…
Black: We make no apologies for that.
Darren: I think that's what scares people about us sometimes: not the music or the various s**t, but that we're not looking to change. We love who we are, what we do, and we're going to keep doing it as long as it pays.

What do you think sells, the image or the music?
Black: First, we don't subscribe to that 'image' bulls**t. This is what we are. We're not gonna dry up, and wipe the make-up off, and comb our hair when we stop playing the tunes. This is it, what you see here. The music, the lyrics… everything comes from that.
Aaron: Without one the other loses something essential. We express who we are from the music, and how we look reflects on that. You can't split them apart.
Black: (Awed voice) That's deep.

A manager you once knew very well said: 'Managing these guys is like controlling a drunk football crowd with a conductor's baton. The very best you can hope for is that you'll get it stuffed up your ass-hole for the trouble.' Is that fair?
Amy: First, remember that guy stole a shitload of money from us and is currently in jail.
Aaron: But otherwise, yeah, totally fair. (laughs) Look, if we could lay down tracks in a balmy hayfield with the sun glinting off our guitars, or some s**t like that, we would. Maybe it's some kind of weird group claustrophobia going on, but the four of us, in a room with a glass wall and disembodied voices everywhere… (laughs) That s**t ain't never gonna work. I salute anyone who gets anything worthwhile out of us.

And you figured the best solution was to manage yourselves?
Black: After all the legal b****x was done with, we were all just so f**king tired and pissed off. But there's something about music, y'know, you can derive an energy from it, it keeps you going. A month after Rich was put behind bars, we were back in Amy's garage hammering the s**t out of a new song. It felt great.

But it hasn't been an easy road since…
Aaron: No, and to be honest, some of the stupid s**t we've done since then was partly because of that. But you learn, y'know, we're… We keep learning.
Amy: We've made every gig since London, for instance.
Darren: And we get to keep all our money now. That's the really cool bit (laughs).

Speaking of money, how have you handled the fame thing? You went from nobodies to the front pages of the major tabloids in about eight seconds. Was it really an overnight success?
Darren: Actually it was. We didn't 'pay our dues' or any crap like that. I think we did, what was it, two gigs before we got signed?
Amy: Yeah, two.
Darren: So that was all kind of wild. We went from practicing in the assembly hall at school, to playing about with an 8-track, to a three-album deal in the space of about six months. There aren't many bands who can say that.

Was it rough? The signing-fee was all over the trade news. The label must have put some pressure on you to justify such a massive investment.
Black: That was bad for a while. They were all, 'We've never laid out as much money up front as we have on you four, so make it worth our while'. And to their faces we were good boys and girls and promised them we'd do our best and behind closed doors we were like (gives interviewer the finger to illustrate), 'f**k you. What were we going to say to all that money, no? If you've made a bad business decision, that's your f**king problem.'
Aaron: But that was kind of a good attitude, y'know. No-one at Carradine was smart enough to have done it deliberately, but it made us mad, motivated us. 'City of Angels' was much f**king madder than it would have been if they'd left us alone. We weren't making songs like that in the school hall, I can tell you that much.

'City of Angels' debuted low and then took out a mortgage on the number one spot for seven weeks. What was that all about?
Amy: (Shrugs) No f**king idea. That was just ridiculous. It went in at, I think, 61 or some dumb-ass number like that, and all four of us were like, 'Well, thank you very much for the retainer, we're going to go and spend your money. Good luck with your next big thing.' But then…
Black: Then it went up like a rocket. It was amazing. It was like the 61 spot was the blue touch paper and stand back. We couldn't believe it.

Do you think it was a British thing?
Black: Well, we still can't sell s**t in America, so, yeah (laughs).
Darren: I think people were ready for a decent British metal band, the market was ready, the industry was ready. Loads of people got behind us. I think it was the Tuesday when we got a phone call from the company to say that sales over the weekend had gone up by a hundred times or something stupid like that. Wednesday we were in a limo to some bulls**t fund-raiser, Thursday we were shooting big, f**king ultra-expensive promos for the album, and Friday we were being told we could expect to millionaires off this CD alone. I had to check I wasn't whacked out three times a day.

And?
Darren: Well, yeah, I was most of the time, but I still knew what was going on (laughs).

Why did Carradine make the decision not to release a single?
Aaron: At the time we thought they were complete a**holes, really A-1 primo dick-heads, but we had to eat that s**t after the album went triple-Platinum. They've got some good marketing boys down there.
Amy: They told us some crap about the 'singles chart summer demographic'. I don't think they even believed it themselves.
Black: The reason was because they were scared, it's as simple as that. I actually heard an early radio edit of 'Brick Chick' and the lyrics might not as well not have been in there, y'know? I think they just left in every seventeenth syllable because they got bored of blanking the swearing. Man that was hilarious. But, I've gotta say that we feel pretty good about being an album-chart kinda band. Makes us feel like musicians. Well, me anyhow.
Amy: More than your drumming does, anyway.

So here you are, massive metal sensation, and then all the legal trouble with your management kicks off. Was that a shot of reality?
Black: It was the record company that put us together with Rich Locha and when we found out he had been stiffing us, man I could have fractured some bones that day. But we made ourselves chill, let the legal machines roll and just got on with the first tour. In the end it was only twenty-seven thou or something. I mean, yeah, it sounds like a lot of money but we were getting a mil-and-a-half for twenty gigs nationally. Twenty-whatever thousand would have been a f**king fortune a year before but the numbers were getting just so big that it didn't matter.

What was your reaction when he was jailed?
Aaron: We were... I was pretty stunned. We knew this guy, he got some good work out of us, and he was sent down for money that I was, like… I was spending as much as that on a f**king whim on Oxford Street. You kind of lose your perspective. But bottom line is he stole our money and he was punished for it. He'll be out in a couple of years doing the same s**t to some other band I'm sure (laughs).

And when he said in court that Carradine had set him up?
Black: Well that was pretty desperate. That came right out of the blue and of course I was on the phone straight away but the record label… They said, 'Don't worry about it, there's nothing going on.' Maybe I stayed suspicious, right up until the first royalty cheque came in (laughs).

Since then things have been back on the up. What do you make of this 'cult of personality' that seems to have sprung up around the band?
Darren: Well, when I see someone with the hair and clothes and make-up walking down the street, it freaks me out. That stuff's bound to set the alarm bells ringing. I mean, sure, imitation is flattery and all that, but we have good reasons, very deep-seated reasons for the way we look and to see someone just copy it on a superficial level, that's just... It worries me.
Aaron: Our fans can do what they like of course and we see a lot of that kind of things at gigs but people need to understand that we're not trying to start a trend here.

But you have, like it or not.
Aaron: I suppose so. But we don't revel in it. We're not four Johnny Rottons sitting like Jesus in the middle of this new 'movement'. We can't stop it happening I suppose and people are free to do what they like - if they get a kick out of it, that's cool.

What about the fact that you're the number one band being Googled in the UK?
Amy: I've seen some of those big fan sites and these guys do amazing stuff with that technology, but it's not really what we're all about. I mean, I spent twenty minutes trying to decipher this three-thousand word essay on the lyrics in 'Blue Sinatra', and man, was that guy talking some s**t. Someone else wrote a couple of stories based on the last line in that, which was kind of interesting, since I wrote the lyrics and I can see some of what I was thinking in those stories.

That seems to be a theme on the fan sites, extrapolating fiction from your songs.
Amy: 'Extrapolate'. That's a f**king long word but you're right, a lot of fans do that. It makes me feel pretty good because a lot of those stories, poems, whatever come pretty close to the heart of the songs that we write, which means we're saying things that matter to these people. That's better than a kick in the ass.

'Triumphant Return to Form' has of course gone in like lightning at the top spot and doesn't look like being threatened any time soon. Is the title suggestive of any second album woes you might have had?
Black: No not really, it just sounded kinda cool (laughs). Never had any worries about the second album or the third or the fourth. If they happen they happen. That's part of the joy of all of this, and I guess it's easy to say that because we've made so much money on the back of this industry, but we really just write what we wanna write. Loads of reviews have said that 'Stamin Shot' is the best thing we've ever done-

We called it 'the most decisive punk revival in the last twenty years'…
Black: Yeah, you did. bulls**t, but thanks anyway (laughs). That'll be our next single, but the thing is, that song took about three minutes to write and the take on the album is only the second one we did. So that's maybe twenty minutes of creative work, it's not a symphony. There's no intent there, we just got lucky and had a flash of group inspiration. And I think that's the most you can ask for, to get lucky three or four times out of twelve on an album, for a couple of albums. Anything more than that and you're f**king blessed.

Triumphant Return to Form is available now from all good (and bad) record shops.
The Blueboys have announced they will be touring the UK again next year.