Mark was an excellent student in school, and popular with the other kids - especially the girls! He only faltered once, taking a test after a sleepless night worrying about all the starving children in the world. “I only got a C because I was looking out of the window and wondering if the little black children played basketball in Heaven. When the results came back, the teacher said that I was capable of much better work. So I know what it is like to be slightly hurt.”

Using this life experience has been the basis of Mark’s singing style, lending it the wet and bothersome edge that has become the trademark of the genre.

When Mark is confronted with his minimal experience of pain, he becomes defensive. “If I have ten apples, I can guess what it would be like to have fifty apples. It would be nicer, and I could start selling apples. So I can work out what it would be like to have more pain, too. It would be less nice, because pain is not like apples, it works the other way around.”

Mark, however, is putting on a brave face. A secret pain that he hides from the public is the time that he was trying to win a cuddly toy at a fairground. He won, but it wasn’t all he expected. “They had these big fluffy dogs on show, but all I got was a crappy little one. I cried so much. I really wanted that big one. I wanted it so much I could taste blood in my throat.”

This may explain the new album’s extra depth, and Mark’s newfound preoccupation with beating up gypsies. “It’s a form of addressing my pain,” he says. “By twatting gypsies with snooker cues, I feel a lot better. Especially if I’m drunk.”