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We get told stuff like, "You don't understand this thing, so just keep out of it." Well, for a start, we can't keep out of it, because we've had to bail everything out in the first place. I think it's good that people are saying that the system we're supposedly messing up is supposed to actually work for us as well, and it doesn't. And they think we've been through a boom? It weren't that good, were it? I don't think normal people really felt like, "Yeah, wow, I was there. We were lighting cigars with fivers." It's like, "Wow, I missed that one." I would have loved " Cunts Are Still Running the World" to have been an international No 1, but radio play was quite difficult for that one… So there’s bad pop and good pop, hunger of all kinds and art as a consistent source of nourishment and pleasure. Several times he mentions that he’s trying to get better at relationships, rather than zoning out in front of the TV and putting all his feelings in a song instead. Clearing out the attic is part of a concerted effort to get to grips with old stuff, on an emotional as well as physical level: to change bad habits, to communicate more instead of escaping into fantasy. “Me ringing you this morning about the dog situation, that was a slight breakthrough,” he announces, surprisingly, “because a few years ago I would have just worried about it. The journey would have been an absolute nightmare. So then ringing, even though I wasn’t pleased about being late, at least I knew I’d dealt with it.” One of the Heras roses given out at Banger’s show The People Deserve Beauty. Photograph: shop.sportsbanger.com From doing work experience at a record shop in Colchester I saw from the older kids how to build my escape route: college, get a student loan, go to uni. I did a music production HND at Sussex uni. I didn’t finish, but I put on my own parties in Brighton, started a record label and worked in pirate radio. That’s where the name Jonny Banger comes from.

Does the phrase "national treasure" make you gag or feel proud? (Screwdriver Cat, online at theguardian.com)That thing of people rolling over and going, "Oh, it looks like I'm making things a bit untidy. I'll get out of your way. Sorry"… It seems to have been accepted quite meekly that the art colleges, as they existed in this country, are just going to disappear. The lecturers aren't going to want to teach the people who are going to end up being the only ones who can afford to go there.

I'm always thinking the revolution could still happen, though. At the moment there's a feeling – I got that when I was on that student march the other day… it's just getting more interesting. Do the subjects of your songs know they've been written about? And if so, how do they feel about it? I'm thinking about Susan (" Inside Susan") and Deborah (" Disco 2000 "). (Child of the Nineties, online)Yes – Lucozade sponsored my last show. The production costs were going up and up so I bootlegged a load of Energy T-shirts because I needed something to sell immediately after the show and I thought that would be a goer. What was the last song you heard that made you think, "Wow. What's that song called?" (JonnyMac99, online) No – people who work in their office have hit me up and said if I ever need stationery or USBs, to just ask. They’ve sent it over and I use it as record company merch. It's been yet another good year for Jarvis, what with the Pulp gigs, the launch of his book of lyrics, Mother, Brother, Lover, and the continued success of his 6Music show. Not that you'd know it: good year or bad year, Jarvis himself doesn't really seem to change. He's still thoughtful, still funny, still more low-key than you might think. He still comes out with answers that you don't quite expect.

In the book he describes trying to provide some kind of sex education for his own adolescent son, to the mortification of both parties. It worries him, the fact that sex and life have become so severed. “Because what you’re dealing with is you get those feelings, those instincts, at a certain age and they are strong feelings and you’ve got to deal with them in some way and if there are no clues except some kind of foul thing online where you start to think of people as objects, and why aren’t I getting my sex that I was promised – or whatever, I don’t know what those people think.” Re X Factor, Jarvis "took a position" after last year's series, where the contestants murdered David Bowie's "Heroes" on one show, the performance culminating with the stage opening up, "and all these soldiers walked on. Because it was for heroes. Like suddenly we're in a totalitarian state. I just thought, that's it, I'm out." Still, he does sneak a look now and then: "I do like Gary Barlow's 'It. Was. Absolutely. Fantastic. I am going to keep my head in this position because I have been told I look good on camera like this.'"We got Caro Howell, director of the Foundling Museum, to write the name of our last fashion show on all the invitations, because she’s got beautiful handwriting. So she came here and wrote “The People Deserve Beauty” loads of times and told us about Hogarth’s The Analysis of Beauty and the line of beauty while she did it. I didn’t know any of those references. The original battle lines over capitalism were a bit simpler. It was that the people who make these things are getting paid peanuts and then the things are sold for a lot more and it was exploitation. But there's no actual product now, is there? Capitalism has gone very abstract – so it's harder to say who the enemy is. In the UK, suddenly, I was crazily recognised, and I couldn’t go out any more. It tipped me into a level of celebrity I couldn’t ever have known existed and wasn’t equipped for. It had a massive, generally detrimental effect on my mental health,” he told The New York Times last July.