total:spec - Preston

This time last year Samuel Preston, or just Preston as he likes to be known, could not have called himself a celebrity. Not that he’d have been particularly bothered, as we’ll later see, but, although he was the lead singer of mildly successful rock band The Ordinary Boys, if he walked down the street he would have turned more heads with his striking pretty boy good looks than with his recognisability.

Then, in January of this year, Preston went into the Celebrity Big Brother house. As such, these days he’s a bona fide celebrity. Those good looks made him the so-called ‘hunk’ of the house (despite his slight frame) - the one all the teenage female viewers latched on to and quickly came to adore. And although he only eventually came fourth in the show, what added to his appeal, both in and once he was out of the house, was his obvious mutual infatuation with the house’s pretend celebrity Chantelle Houghton. His ensuing break-up from his then girlfriend Camille Aznar and subsequent marriage in August (just seven months after they’d met) to Chantelle has made Preston one of the most talked about and high profile British music stars of 2006.

But as well as giving Preston a new career as a celebrity, it also saved his band. The truth is, The Ordinary Boys - also made up of William Brown on guitar, James Gregory on bass, and Simon Goldring on drums - were sliding rapidly back into obscurity before Big Brother. After the initial flurry of music press interest in the band during 2004, thanks to their lively debut album Over The Counter Culture, its follow up, 2005’s Brassbound, was lacking in both imagination and, more importantly, tunes.

It’s one memorable song, the ska-pop gem Boys Will Be Boys, only managed No 16 on its first release and it looked like The Ordinary Boys were only going to manage meriting a footnote in the history of early 21st century guitar bands. And so, while it was a huge surprise to see Preston walk into the Big Brother house on that first day, you could understand why he did it. It’s the 21st century way of saving an ailing entertainment career.

Except Preston proclaims that’s not why he did it all. He’s said in many interviews he was just a fan of the show and wanted to experience it firsthand. More recently he’s admitted he was a bit bored with his life - settled down with his girlfriend in Brighton, trudging along with his band. But what he’s adamant about is that it wasn’t a career move.

“I mean, yeah, it’s undeniably helped,” he says now, talking on the phone as he is transported from a hotel to an appearance with his band at the Oxford Street London branch of HMV. “And I think that it would have been genius of me if I had have done it to help the band, but, you know, I didn’t,” he laughs.

Big Brother pretty much saved the band from being dropped. In the wake of Preston’s success on the show, Boys Will Be Boys re-entered the charts and went to No 3, while even the lacklustre Brassbound scored a more impressive No 11 on the album chart. They then went out on a successful nationwide tour, rallying the fans - both old (the so-called ‘Ordinary Army’) and new - as they prepared for their next move as a band. But that, says Preston, is as far as the influence of Big Brother went.

Listening to the band’s latest album How To Get Everything You Ever Wanted In Ten Easy Steps, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a reaction to Preston’s new-found status as a household name. It is the most mainstream thing the band have done, packed full of unrelentingly poppy melodies, electronic sounds and a pleasingly polished production. But Preston says the new sound is actually a reaction to the last album, not a cynical ploy to please fans he acquired in the Big Brother house.

“Making Brassbound we were all just terribly depressed,” he says. “Ultimately we’re pop stars and we should be having an absolute ball, being decadent and debauched and just enjoying everything. It should be making us excited. But it just felt like we were turning into middle-aged men. We were dangerously close to becoming Ocean Colour Scene and it was all a bit depressing. But in a way it was good that we went through that because our reaction has been making this album.”

But why not just make this album last time?

“I just think it’s really difficult to make a pop album, and to have the confidence to do it. There’s a lot of false arrogance in rock’n’roll and people don’t seem to be able to spot it, but I can spot it. I was becoming a bit guilty of it and I didn’t like it. But I think it’s important for a band to have that confidence and arrogance and a bit of swagger. Just a bit of triumphance about themselves. But I was getting to the stage where I would be like, [flatly] ‘yeah, fuck off you twats’, and it was all a bit depressing.

“Now we’ve found a genuine arrogance and I feel confident enough to make a poppy album. There’s already been the inevitable backlash, which has really polarised opinion on the band, which I think is great anyway. I can deal with that in terms of I don’t like the idea of being a real indie band. I want as many people to enjoy our music as possible, I want to be a pop band. As long as we’re polarising it in a way that the mainstream media is embracing us and the niche, cliquey media is rejecting us, well, that’s kind of the point.”

What is certain is that, had Preston not done Big Brother, the lyrics on How To Get Everything You Ever Wanted In Ten Easy Steps would have been very different. His celebrity, and his apparently tongue-in-cheek attitude towards it, is all over the songs. But what he actually thinks about it all is difficult to fathom. Since he left the house he has whole-heartedly embraced the celebrity lifestyle. He appeared on the cover of the Daily Mirror topless. Even more astounding was his cover shoot with pseudo-posh celeb mag Hello! Then in August he and Chantelle sold their wedding photos to Hello!’s rival OK!

“I feel like I’ve got this interesting mission of blurring the lines between what is seen as indie and what is seen as mainstream,” says Preston. “I think really they’re one and the same thing. They’re both controlled by the same big record label bosses, it’s just whether they decide to promote a band through MySpace or through morning television. It’s all really the same thing.

“I think there is an unhealthy stigma which is attached to music,” he adds, “which makes people have to pigeonhole music. Whatever music turns you on, turns you on. I think it’s ridiculous to have to set yourself rules about that because of what’s seen as cool. I think the whole idea of people saying, ‘Seriously you should check out this band, they’re well unsuccessful’ is crap. Surely if bands are any good they’ll sell millions of records and everyone would like them.”

Do you think you’ve succeeded in keeping your feet in both camps?

“I don’t know if I have. I’m not sure. It’s hard to judge your own public perception. But everyone who gets it just thinks the whole thing is so funny and I love that.”

So are you completely taking the piss out of it all, or is there part of you that enjoys it as well?

“I enjoy it in a kind of perverse way, in the same way that I enjoy watching a car crash. There is a part of me that absolutely enjoys it and I love the hypocrisy of the fact that I’m in this world, and making money from this world, then going off and trying to be satirical about it as well. I really relish in the whole hypocrisy of it. I’m this person who manages to contradict myself in the same word sometimes,” he laughs. “So there’s something quite fun about that, in a perverse, slightly deranged kind of way.”

Of course it’s not all fun. Preston has had to deal with the story coming out about his addiction to sleeping pills, which he tackled just by being honest about it, and the constant speculation about his relationship with Chantelle. He pays tribute to the so-called ‘close friends’ that are quoted in the many stories about him in last single Lonely At The Top.

“I have probably three or four close friends and none of them would ever speak to the press about me,” says Preston. “So I’m kind of safe in that if someone talks to the press about me chances are I’ve never met them, and I never got my invitation to the drugs and sex orgy that we supposedly had together. It’s kind of like, it doesn’t really matter. I just find the whole thing quite funny. Like, there was a story recently that I’d said I’d married a bimbo.”

Did you actually say that?

“I don’t know. I probably did but it was probably a joke. I think someone said to me in an interview, ‘How does it feel being married to a bimbo?’, and I just think bimbo is such a non-descript term. It kind of a implies a whole load of things. I just said something about it being great because it’s an ideal situation for a man, and so it’s a big fuck you to all the bullies at school. I wasn’t even bullied at school, I don’t know why I said that. I’m not particularly stressed about the story, and Chantelle laughs at it, so it actually makes great entertainment, I think. It makes life constantly exciting because you never know what ridiculous thing you’re going to read about yourself.”

How did it feel seeing your wedding photos on cover of a magazine?

“Well we actually got married at 11 o’clock that morning at a little private ceremony anyway. So we had our marriage and then we had the photoshoot for 20 minutes in the afternoon. I don’t know, I really enjoyed it. I do like the whole kind of glamour of it all. It’s something I don’t often indulge myself in, that kind of glamour, so it was just good to have a day of ridiculous celebrity glitz.”

So there is a part of you that loves it.

“Yeah I think so. I think if you don’t embrace it in a sense you can’t really be critical of it. It’s far too easy to dismiss the whole celebrity world as this disgusting tacky thing. But it’s 21st century royalty isn’t it? And it’s such a vague term, it’s so weird. The whole thing fascinates and repels me in equal measure. I still don’t really know what to make of it, and I’ve been dabbling with it for almost a year now.”

Do you think it has any importance?

“Well, I just think it’s fun and should be treated as such. Everyone takes everything so seriously these days. I think it’s the best bit advice - chill out, it doesn’t matter. It is what it is, really.”

Preston is a great believer in Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame theory. He fully expects the high level of media interest that there’s been this year in both him and Chantelle to die down very quickly. Now that the two of them are married he fully expects people to lose interest, and a cynical part of you almost wonders if that’s one reason they got married so quickly. But Preston’s obviously in love, and seems to be just trying to play the fame game a little differently.

“I’m constantly waiting for it all to collapse around me, and that slightly taints everything,” he laughs. “But in a way that makes me enjoy it more, I think. If you stayed drunk and you didn’t expect a hangover, you wouldn’t relish in your drunkenness so much. I think we’re getting drunker and drunker and the hangover is going to be worse and worse. There’s something quite exciting yet terrifying about that. I quite like the drama of it all.”

And what if it doesn’t end? What if the interest in you and Chantelle carries on as long as it has for, say, Jade Goody?

“But isn’t she a public jester though? I wouldn’t put myself in that position. I feel like I’m not quite as grotesque as that. The public like something they can prod at and go, look at that, it’s weird. I’ve got dark secrets but no one’s ever going to find out about them. Many lives have been lost ensuring that won’t happen.”

But there is the public perception that you and Chantelle are a bit of a mismatch. That might hold people’s interest.

“And I suppose we are. I think that’s what makes it great for us. If I’d have gone out with some singer out of a band it would be terribly boring and I’d be terribly bored anyway. I think I try and do things to make life more interesting, and by doing that I’ve accidentally met my wife. It’s quite funny.”