Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Neil Claxton

Totally mint!

Can you believe that a decade has flown by for Mint Royale and Faith and Hope?

"I can’t really. Maybe we don’t do things quick enough; I’m sure other people would have fitted a lot more stuff in that time. But we’ve done ok. If we’d just been sat in the studio and done nothing else, then we might have done things quicker. The reality is, though, with our music taking off in other countries and me doing the label, things have been drawn out."

Why did you decide it was time for your Best Of?

As was: Neil with former member Chris Baker

"We were wondering what to do next with Mint Royale, because we’ve had personnel changes, so I thought, let’s round up all the best bits. So many people like certain bits of our sound but don’t realise it’s by the same people.

"Also, we thought if we round it all up, we can have a real look at what we’ve done and it’ll help us decide what to do next. So it’s as much for us as for the audience, but it’s not a full stop. It’s an open ending to say ‘this is Mint Royale so far, what will happen next?’"

Why is it called Pop Is…?

Mint Royale with Lauren Laverne

"When we first started Faith and Hope, we went to MIDEM [music industry festival] in t-shirts that said ‘Pop Is Easy’ on them, and it’s a phrase that stuck with me. So that’s part of the reason, but I think it’s too arrogant a phrase for this.

"So we were having a discussion down the pub about whether Mint Royale is pop or not. The conclusion was that we didn’t know, so we thought we’d leave it as an open question."

You’ve collaborated with a wide variety of people along the way. Who was most enjoyable?

"I know it goes back to our very beginnings, but Lauren Laverne was just the nicest person to work with. She was really good fun and gave it her all. We still keep in touch, but we’ve never really wanted to do anything together again. We did talk about it, but we decided that we had such a good time on Don’t Falter that we didn’t want to risk ruining those memories by not having as good a time second time around."

The video for Blue Song features Noel Fielding as a getaway driver. How did that come about?

"You just fall into these things. The video was directed by Edgar Wright [Spaced and Shaun Of The Dead]. We knew that Edgar liked our stuff, because he’d used it in Spaced, and he gave us the idea. Sony were involved in this one and they were really hesitant about it, because Edgar wanted to use this guy that no-one had ever heard of.

Noel Fielding

"At the time, Noel was filming a pilot for The Mighty Boosh. We were asking him what he normally did and he was saying stuff about igloos and apes and things. It was absolute nonsense and we were thinking ‘maybe Sony were right. We thought this would be good but maybe we’ve made a terrible mistake!’

"But he was fantastic and you know what? It’s weird; we now get so many hits to the website because of Noel and the Mighty Boosh. It’s odd how these things happen, because we had no idea at the time."

There’s a rumour that Prince William is a Mint Royale fan…

Neil and Tara Palmer-Tomkinson

"The story goes that we got an email before the last album came out from someone claiming to be from Buckingham Palace saying would it be possible to send a copy of the new album. We thought it was a wind-up, so we sent an email back with directions to the nearest record shop to the Palace, suggesting they could buy it there when it came out.

"A few weeks later, we read in a tabloid that he’d been at a party and he’d wanted to get on the decks so that he could play some Mint Royale. So it might have been genuine! Maybe we were a bit hasty. We did meet Tara Palmer-Tomkinson once and she’s a big fan, so maybe she got him into it."

Of course, alongside Mint Royale, you’ve been at the helm of Faith and Hope for ten years. Are you still glad you decided to start a label?

"There’s a certain sort of satisfaction that we’re still going and that it can still financially support itself. In terms of Mint Royale, it’s been brilliant because we’ve been able to have the best of both words, keeping things to ourselves when we’ve wanted to or getting bigger labels involved if needs be.

"I’ve enjoyed working with the other acts. In the end, there’s times when you don’t really have any ideas so it’s nice to be able to work with music where other people have had the ideas and you’re just getting to decide what you do and don’t like."

Obviously, you like all your acts, but are there any acts that you’re particularly proud of bringing to the public’s attention?

Mike TV of Beats For Beginners

"You do feel a bit like that for all the bands and even if the acts don’t do that well, we can still be proud of some great records. I always think of Beats For Beginners. Their album is brilliant, it’s a great indie-pop album, but for some reason it never really took off. It almost did, but it just wouldn’t go.

"So you have some regrets, but then there’s bands like Morning Runner, who’ve moved on to Parlophone now, and they could be huge, so it’s nice to think that we did our part for them.

"It’s interesting because we’ve just been putting together some compilations to mail-out to the industry and we were going through the entire back catalogue and there was hardly anything that I thought ‘best not bother with that, it’s rubbish.’ Everything has its merits and, at the time, was a good idea."