Simon Ashberry talks to Chumbawamba singer Alice Nutter about chart success - and karaoke.

West Yorkshire band Chumbawamba play their long-awaited homecoming gig next week.

The anarcho-popsters are assured of a rapturous welcome when they perform at the Town and Country Club in Leeds on Monday.

Since their last live show on home territory, the band have been transformed from alternative also-rans on the fringes of the pop scene to fully-fledged chart stars.

The key to their bewildering rise was the phenomenal commercial success of their single Tubthumping.

Vocalist Alice Nutter, one of the four band members who originally hail from Burnley, said the record had sold so well all around the world that it had actually caused a few headaches over the timing of the follow-up single Amnesia.

"We would have released Amnesia a lot sooner but we had a problem with Tubthumping because it was still number one in Australia and Italy," she said.

As well as selling by the bucketload, the song has found itself way into countless TV and radio jingles - and even onto the nation's karaoke machines.

"I love that part of it. The best thing about it is it being on karaoke," said Alice.

"We're the number one tape in West Yorkshire. In the past it's been Simply The Best and Lady In Red and now it's us, which is brilliant."

The accompanying album Tubthumper also enjoyed chart action but on a modest scale compared to the single, which peaked at number two in the UK.

"We were number three in the American album charts. That's the bit I could never have envisaged," said Alice.

"I think that what's happened over here is that the record label concentrated on the single but in the States they've realised it's a really good album as well."

Chumbawamba's sudden success is all the more surprising because they have frequently courted controversy.

Originally formed in the early Eighties as a anarchist group based in the shadow of Armley Jail, they found immediate favour with John Peel, that well-known champion of lesser lights.

Their first single Revolution, which featured the sound of John Lennon's record Imagine being smashed to pieces, finished at number six in the Radio 1 DJ's annual Festive 50 listeners' poll.

But its follow-up We Are The World was banned from airplay because of its support for direct action.

The Chumbas' first album was called Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records in response to Live Aid and the band later caused unease with artwork featuring close-up photographs of a baby being born.

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