EXCLUSIVE: PAUL HEATON, THE SAUDI PRINCESS AND AN ILL-ADVISED QUEST FOR BEER - Former frontman of The Housemartins and The Beautiful South reveals all

“I’m sort of like the Elton John of iTunes. I live in a fairly modest house, I don’t have a car, I don’t holiday in Barbados but I spend a ridiculous amount – hundreds of thousands – on iTunes,” Paul Heaton explains his guilty vice as he sips alcohol free lager at the pub around the corner from his Manchester home.

The former Housemartin and founder member of The Beautiful South is looking relaxed as he reveals he has just celebrated the birth of his third daughter – named Meredith in recognition of his recently discovered Welsh roots – and exclusively recounts the time he nearly caused a diplomatic incident in an ill-advised quest for beer. But more about that later.


The internet has taken over from the days since Heaton first scribbled his monthly alternative Top 20 in a notebook in May 1980 and now his personal charts are held on iTunes.

“I only listen to music that’s not in the charts. I root around deep and as soon as something gets in the charts I drop it, which is pretty bad, apart from old soul songs,” he said. “It’s a hell of a lot of work – the one thing I fear losing in a house fire.”

He plans to publish them, alongside his song lyrics, notes of daft office conversations (78-81) and collected crisp packets and beer mats (1980-1990) in a coffee table book.
He plays Koko on April 1 and will dredge up a couple of old Housemartins songs for the set.

Heaton said: “We’ve got a support band called Admiral Fallow. They’re absolutely brilliant. It would scare me that people will feel slightly deflated when they see me after them.”

Camden should bring back memories for him: “MTV is it still there? That’s how popular I am these days I wouldn’t even know. We’d go drinking in Camden before and after MTV in The Elephant’s Head. In general The Beautiful South used to drink in central London and The Housemartins used to go home because they couldn’t afford to have a drink in London.”

He’s enjoying his solo career but is finding it hard to get national exposure, Radio 1 won’t touch him, he’s not current enough for BBC 6 Music so Radio 2 is the only station who realistically will play his music, he said, adding: “It’s quite a struggle. I can’t get on radio very easily. A couple of people in radio who don’t like my voice are quite high up, which is fair enough, there’s nothing I can do about it nothing they can do about it...Either I’m making shit records or they’ve got shit taste. I’m not one of those people who thinks I’m making brilliant records so perhaps it’s a mixture of the pair of them. I’m not making records as commercial and their taste isn’t as good as it used to be.”

While he may have fallen out of mainstream consciousness, Heaton has been busy.
He said: “I’ve written a 60-verse song based on the Seven Deadly Sins, which sounds very pretentious, which is being premiered at the Manchester International Festival. I’d done two solo albums I just wanted to throw a curve ball. I wasn’t getting any airplay I thought I’d write a song that’s an hour long.”

Last year he cycled more than 1000 miles stopping off to play gigs in pubs including The Monarch on his Pedals and Beer Pumps tour, accompanied by support and bicycle guru Gus Devlin and an old soft toy he rescued from a muddy puddle dubbed Centipede Business Solutions.

Next year, he plans to mark his 50th birthday by cycling 50 miles for every year he’s been on the planet (2,500 in total) across Britain and Ireland.
But it’s his adventures in London that really capture the imagination.

He recalls the time he and Beautiful South lead guitarist Dave Rotheray were in London after a gig. Their hotel bar was closed so they returned to the Columbia Hotel opposite Hyde Park, where they stayed the previous night to ask if they could use the 24-hour bar. They were turned away. But as they walked away miserably, Paul noticed scaffolding on the side of the hotel.

He said: “There was a window open. I said, we’ll get up the scaffold, which is several hundred feet high, jump through the window, run through the person’s room, leg it downstairs and we’ll get served at the bar as residents.

“We climbed up, got onto the ledge and suddenly this bloke... he must have been close to 7 ft, in full white robe and hat, an Arab, grabbed my neck, flung me to the edge of the scaffold and started saying I’ll kill you. Dave legged it, went straight back down the scaffold, didn’t help me. I’m being pinned back looking down below at the streets of London and the traffic. Next thing the police come, I’m being taken to a cell...he’d been the bodyguard to a high ranking Saudi princess that I’d got onto the balcony of.”
He was questioned in Marylebone station and released 14 hours later but miraculously kept the story out of the papers.