A lot of old prejudices and grudges come back with the Soft Cell name. Greeting me in the “library” of a posh Covent Garden hotel (since when did hotels start having “libraries”?) Marc Almond extends his hand to shake mine, and I come palm-to-palm with one solitary and fingerless black leather glove.
It’s a subtle touch, but one which carries an unmistakable frisson of recognition for anyone who remembers watching the black-clad pixie of the perverse clapping those wrists together to “Tainted Love” on Top of the Pops, or who recalls buying a copy of “Bedsitter” or “Torch” and feeling that the very act of so doing put you in contact with a whole world of the forbidden.”The name Soft Cell brings back a lot of ghosts,” Almond smiles, “some of which are pleasurable, some of them not so pleasurable. I can’t help noticing that he’s in character. Pulp have announced that they have no plans to record together again. Oasis retain only two of the five members who recorded Definitely Maybe in 1994 – the Gallagher brothers. Blur have just parted company with Graham Coxon, one of the most gifted guitarists of his generation.

Pop and indie have shaken hands and gone their separate ways again.There’s only one person who has the right combination of showbiz ambition and indie attitude to be called a Britpop artist Chillingly, that person is Robbie Williams. In the post-Spice era of Pop Stars and Pop Idol, the status quo has been restored. Travis called their third album The Invisible Band to underline the point: parties, premieres, controversy and rivalry were best left to the professionals And there was no shortage of professionals. Travis, Coldplay, the Stereophonics, the Doves and Badly Drawn Boy are the shrinking violets to Britpop’s tall poppies, insisting that their jobs begin and end with putting on jeans and sweatshirts and playing songs. Oasis broke up, then reunited, then broke up, then reunited again.The next wave of guitar bands made it clear that they weren’t pop stars. As for Pulp, their 1998 follow up to Different Class was called This Is Hardcore, it had a porn model on the front cover, and it opened with Cocker informing us, “This is the sound of loneliness turned up to 10/ A horror soundtrack from a stagnant water-bed/ The sound of someone losing the plot.” He retired to make a documentary about outsider art Albarn scored films and discovered world music.

Oasis released Be Here Now, on which every song was bloated by cocaine. In 1997, Blur released a punky racket of an album influenced by the American alt-rockers, Pavement. Elastica took five years and as many line-up changes to finish their second album, and Frischmann was already nostalgic for the old days: “What I want,” she murmured, “is a room with a three-bar fire/ Like the one you had before/ When you were poor/ And I just liked you more.”Britpop’s other leading lights were much more swift to alienate their younger fans. They had been handed the keys to the palace, only to realise that they preferred the bedsit, after all. Today’s entertainment industry being far more corporate than it was in the Sixties, it involved too many sacrifices and compromises, children’s TV appearances and paparazzi chases for people who specialised in sharp, personal songs about life on the dole The Britpackers were indie kids at heart. A more basic explanation is that a union between pop and indie could only ever be an unstable one.