I'VE long been intrigued by Neil Hannon – not just because he once wrote a song called Something For The Weekend.
The son of a Northern Irish bishop, he's a dog-loving, cricket-watching, tea-drinking one of a kind.
As The Divine Comedy's chief creative force, his music somehow manages to run the gamut of emotions.
By turns, it is poignant, whimsical, solemn, joyous, observational, personal, mischievous, life-affirming and more besides.
Who can forget the way he extolled the virtues of coach journeys with, "Take the National Express when your life's in a mess/It'll make you smile".
And what about the just released Mar-a-Lago By The Sea?
In the style of what Hannon calls a "nauseating" cabaret act in the corner of Donald Trump's Florida resort hotel, he inhabits the persona of the President — now retired in his prison cell and pining for his "secluded paradise".
He croons: "All that ostentatious wealth, the paintings of myself."
Yet the same artist also manages to write in heart-rending style about his late father's struggles with Alzheimer's.
Another of his new songs begins: "The last time I saw the old man/He was moving very slowly/And he didn't seem to know me."
Since forming The Divine Comedy in 1989, it's fair to say Hannon has forged a singular, almost unclassifiable path.
Don't mention the clichéd phrase "chamber pop" in his presence.
But, if chart positions are anything to go by, he is feeling the love like never before.
His band's 13th studio album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, entered the UK charts at a career high of No.4.
The 11 tracks assume a reflective tone, with love and loss prominent themes, and feature some of Hannon's most sumptuous and ambitious tunes.
I had very much been looking forward to speaking to this witty, thoughtful character when our video call flickered into life.
The 54-year-old is in County Kildare, not far from Dublin, at the home he shares with his partner, the singer Cathy Davey, "four dogs and some ex-pet pigs".
They are patrons of Irish animal charity My Lovely Horse Rescue, named after the fabled Father Ted Eurovision song for which Hannon wrote the music.
He describes his rural surroundings as a "sanctuary" and adds: "It was set up by Cathy and her friends in the early 2010s.
"We're very animal-oriented people. My mum's a very horsey person and I spend a lot of my time with animals.
"And when you see the need, you try to do something about it."
But he admits that he's the member of the team not noted for getting his hands dirty.
My masterplan worked!
"I am the indoor gentleman," he affirms. "I like to look out the window at this pastoral scene of everybody doing really hard work in the rain.
"Then I just go off and pretend to be a pop star. It's a good life."
Key among Hannon's "pop" exploits in between The Divine Comedy's previous album, 2019's Office Politics, and the new one has been a significant brush with Hollywood.
He was commissioned to write the songs for the mega-musical Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet.
"It was a big deal for me," he says, before explaining how it came about and why it had such a positive impact on the subsequent recording of Rainy Sunday Afternoon.
"Many decades ago, I was a great pop star," he says, tongue firmly in cheek. And the Wonka director, Paul King, was but a young student.
"And he listened to this band (The Divine Comedy) and he really, really liked them.
"After that, I managed to cling on to my career just long enough for him to go, 'I think I need songs for this film I'm making. I know, I'll get Hannon'. So my masterplan worked!"
I thought to myself, 'I might not have too many more opportunities, so I'm going to bloody well do this album there, too. Push the boat out, take out a second mortgage'.
King is the in-demand British director who cut his teeth on surreal TV comedy The Mighty Boosh before masterminding the first two Paddington films — and lately the portrayal of Roald Dahl's madcap chocolatier Willy Wonka.
When Hannon was asked by King to write songs in tandem with Joby Talbot's score, he remembers thinking, "This is a dream — like I've written the email myself".
"Then, when I heard Timothée Chalamet was in the lead role, I thought, 'This is going to be big'.
"I knew I was capable because I absolutely love that sort of music and those sort of films.
"Being a Paul King movie, I also knew it would have a lot of heart and be gorgeous to look at.
Hannon likens the work of the late, great children's author Dahl "to a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, doing whatever he wants".
"Basically, my wife Cathy is the personification of a Roald Dahl book," he decides.
"She is so naughty and so cheeky — and she does what she wants. That's why I love her!"
We move on to the recording of Rainy Sunday Afternoon in the hallowed confines of a certain studio in St. John's Wood, North London, known as The Beatles' playground.
"That was forced on me by Wonka," says Hannon. "I had too much fun recording the Wonka stuff at Abbey Road.
"I thought to myself, 'I might not have too many more opportunities, so I'm going to bloody well do this album there, too. Push the boat out, take out a second mortgage'."
So how did he find the experience of making an album where The Beatles, Pink Floyd and others had gone before?
Hannon replies: "They were very kind to us — although I don't believe the ghosts of John Lennon or Syd Barrett were watching over us, guiding our hands. But they do have spectacular microphones and there's something about the largeness, the activity in the place, the beautiful building.
"When you go in, you feel like you're in a music factory. You're there to make good stuff."
This is our cue to dive into Rainy Sunday Afternoon's 11 tracks of "good stuff", the product of ten fevered days of sessions during which Hannon "pushed the boundaries".
The lilting finale Invisible Thread summons the conflicted feelings of a parent as their child flies the nest and features his daughter Willow on backing vocals.
"That one started life in Wonka world," says Hannon. "Then the scene it was meant to be in disappeared.
"It tugs at the heartstrings but in a good, positive way. You've made this fully functional human who can go out into the world and do his or her own thing."
The album begins in arresting fashion with Achilles, which "has been around for ten years, waiting for its chance".
It was inspired by the First World War poem Achilles In The Trench by Patrick Shaw-Stewart, written in 1915 as he waited to fight at Gallipoli.
The poet calls on the titular Greek warrior to help him summon strength, and pleads with him to "stand in the trench" and "shout for me".
With such low life expectancy, it comes as no surprise that Shaw-Stewart died two years later in France, struck in the head by a shell fragment.
Hannon says: "In 2014, the centenary of the war, I read about the poem and Googled it.
"Around that time, I had a birthday and was being miserable about being old.
"The poem took me by the shoulders and shook me. It was saying, 'This guy only lived half as long as you. So count your blessings, you lucky bastard'."
The Achilles song was considered for Office Politics but "didn't fit", then Hannon thought it would be "thrown away" on recent compilation album Charmed Life.
"But when this album was turning into a very orchestral, very open, very emotional record, I rearranged Achilles with that in mind."
Another song that goes straight to the record's emotional core is previously mentioned The Last Time I Saw The Old Man.
A combination of stately piano, heartfelt singing and a sublime string arrangement, it portrays the twilight years of Brian Hannon who died in 2022 after a long decline through Alzheimer's.
'Excellent preacher'
His son opens up about the career clergyman who served as Bishop Of Clogher from 1986 until his retirement in 2001.
If it's the right thing, I'll do it in a flash. I've got 20 or 25 years' more work time and I don't want to waste it on things I'm not into. I've got enough money, a nice house — and more pigs than you can throw a stick at.
Neil Hannon on more Divine Comedy albums and Wonka-style film projects
"If I was forced to criticise my father, it's because he was so involved in his work," he says. "We didn't get to see him as much as we'd have liked.
"He was an excellent preacher, lacking that mannered style you so often get, and everyone enjoyed his blessedly short sermons."
Did he have a good sense of humour? I venture.
"Yeah, it was weirdly scatalogical — he liked fart jokes," smiles Hannon, before exclaiming, "My mum will be horrified at me for saying that!"
Giving a clue to where his own talent may come from, he continues: "My father loved music, mostly of a romantic nature.
"He was a very good pianist and liked to play Chopin, Debussy and Rachmaninoff.
"My granny Hannon always reminded us that he would have been a concert pianist had he not gone into the clergy."
Returning to the song itself, Neil Hannon describes it as a "brutally observational portrait of Alzheimer's, of a man "in ever-decreasing circles".
"When he eventually did let go, I remember feeling a huge wave of relief."
That moment is captured in the final lines, "As we left, the sun was setting on the land/The last time I saw the old man."
Hannon solved the song's composition while sitting at the piano so frequently played by his father in the family home. (He also wrote most of the first three Divine Comedy albums on it.)
He says: "I had the words and the rough chords, but it wasn't really happening.
"Then I sat down and played the piano I'd grown up with — and suddenly, I was singing the tune."
I suggest to Hannon that his songs generally seem to have compelling back stories, but his response isn't what I expected.
"My slight frustration is that you guys understandably talk about the lyrics," he says.
"In many ways, I write them just to have something to sing. I enjoy the music the most."
Instead of moving on to another lyrically rich song, I decide it's best to ask Hannon about the album's sublime piano instrumental Can't Let Go, which has a strong emotional pull.
"Ha! Nobody ever mentions that one," he cries. "But it's an emotive piece.
"I was on the cusp of orchestrating it, but it deserved to be just piano. It has a stillness and poignancy.
"There are so many f***ing lyrics so sometimes it's nice to give people a rest from constant imagery — and my annoying voice!"
Elsewhere, there's brilliantly titled The Man Who Turned Into A Chair, which alludes to the hours "I've spent sitting on my a***" watching cricket, among other things.
"It's funny, I'm an Irishman yet I follow England at cricket," says the man who once led a side project called The Duckworth-Lewis Method, named after the calculation required for rain-interrupted matches.
"But when it comes to football, f*** off! And I'm even more violently pro-Ireland in rugby terms."
As for his personal commitment to healthy pursuits, Hannon reveals: "I've been trying to make a conscious effort — at least I take the dogs out every day."
Another song of note is the yearning love song I Want You — not the first time that title has been used. "I knew how many other I Want Yous there were in the world," he admits.
"Marvin Gaye, The Beatles, Elvis Costello. But I thought I'd just put myself up there in that pantheon. No other line would fit so I had to keep it."
Then there's the title track, born out of "a little tiff" on a Rainy Sunday Afternoon during lockdown, and the Christmassy All The Pretty Lights which recalls a magical trip to London during his childhood.
"It was all I could do to keep the sleigh bells to a minimum," says Hannon. "I just wanted it to be a good song that doesn't beat you over the head.
"But I will release it to radio at Christmas. You've got to cash in — I have to pay for Abbey Road!"
Before we go our separate ways, I'm keen for Hannon to imagine his future.
More Divine Comedy albums? More Wonka-style film projects?
He answers: "If it's the right thing, I'll do it in a flash. I've got 20 or 25 years' more work time and I don't want to waste it on things I'm not into.
"I've got enough money, a nice house — and more pigs than you can throw a stick at."
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