How We Met: Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn

Tracey Thorn, 30, was born in Peterborough; Ben Watt, also 30, was born in London. Both graduates of Hull University, in English and English and Drama respectively, they formed acoustic pop duo Everything But The Girl 11 years ago, while they were still students. Everything But The Girl's biggest hit was 'I Don't Want To Talk About It', which reached No 3 in 1988. Two years later they were playing concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. Their new single, a cover version of Paul Simon's 'The Only Living Boy in New York', is released tomorrow. They live together in North London.

BEN WATT: In West Hampstead there was a kind of punk new-wave club, the Moonlight Club, and I first saw Tracey when she was playing there with the Marine Girls, her first band, which she was in from school - it was in 1980 or 1981. Although we didn't know each other at the time, we were actually on the same record label, Cherry Red, in the Eighties post-punk independent label boom - I'd been signed as a solo artist. I thought the Marine Girls were a cool band, I was a big fan, I really loved her voice.

I never met her that night in Hampstead, but we were both only making pin-money out of being in bands, and we both had the chance for higher education. Just by chance we happened to go to the same university, which was Hull, in 1981. On the very first day I put a message over the university Tannoy system saying 'If Tracey Thorn of the Marine Girls is around, could she come up and meet me in reception' and she came along 10 minutes later. She was wearing what she always wore in those days - little rolled-up Fifties jeans, bare legs showing at the bottom, flat shoes and Fifties shirt. The first thing I said to her was 'Do you know who I am?' and she said 'I expect you're Ben Watt' - in fact she'd seen a picture of me. My next question was 'Have you brought your guitar?'

We started off real pals - when you are in a strange place for the first time you try and side with people who you feel an affinity with, and it was record collections and pop music and films that we had in common. We struck a bond almost immediately, just us two against the rest of them. We used to hang out, drink, go to films. We just got closer and closer, firstly as friends. I had quite a lot of ex-lover baggage to get rid of, pre-university stuff, which was quite awkward and unpleasant. Once that was resolved we strode on together as a couple.

We were a bit cagey about an initial musical collaboration. It wasn't until someone at the record company suggested that we should do something together as we were living in the same town that we thought about anything like forming Everything But The Girl. The name of the group was taken from a furniture shop in Hull, Turner's, and their slogan was 'Everything but the girl'. The idea was that they could sell you everything to make your home complete except the girl. Deeply corny. We never thought Everything But The Girl would stick around - if we had, maybe we would have chosen a better name.

We have a common world view, a common value system, we often draw the same things out of films and books, hate the same TV personalities. We spend pretty much all of the time together and we always have done. It's the way I enjoy living life, I'm not very good on my own, I don't enjoy my own company. If Tracey goes away for a couple of days, I tend to spend the first couple of hours just tidying up, then I just sit there and get very bored. I'm used to living with her around. It's comforting, the sound of somebody else in the house. To me, the idea of going out to work at, say, seven, taking the train, working up in town, coming back, seeing your wife and your kids again at maybe eight in the evening, spending two fractious hours in each others' company, sleeping for another six hours, so you're basically spending only about a quarter of your life with the person you've chosen to marry, seems very strange.

I've always liked the idea that we're still getting away with it by not being married, just hanging out with Tracey. I've always felt that's been one of the driving forces behind our relationship, like those very early days when we met and we were just blasting through life on our own, like some kind of couple out of a Godard movie. It's a romantic image. That sustains me somehow. We're as good as married, but I still kind of hold out.

I had to go into hospital quite suddenly last June, with a rare disease that attacks the intestines, and I ended up in there for about nine weeks, three weeks of which was on life support. I basically touched base with death and came back. Going through a really bad illness, you sink with it and your expectations sink with it and your parameters contract and you don't expect as much from life than when you just walk down the street on a sunny day - I think it was hardest for Tracey and my mother, who spent a lot of time at the hospital. It was an intensely emotional time for both of us, I think more so for Tracey during the illness, more so for me when I got home and was starting to come to terms with the fact that I'd pulled through it all and could concentrate on being Tracey's partner again rather than just on getting better. It involved a huge amount of building work, which cemented our relationship - if it ever needed cementing.

TRACEY THORN: The first time I ever saw him was when we met in the union bar at Hull University, when he had me called up over the Tannoy. He was wearing an overcoat, as opposed to all the other students who were in duffel-coats and trainers. As soon as we started talking, after about 10 minutes, I realised I liked him a lot. I thought he was very funny; he made me laugh pretty quickly. I wasn't particularly attracted to him straightaway, I don't think, but as soon as I spent any time in his company, after a few days, I was.

We were thrown into each other's company by being at university together and doing quite similar courses, and also just by accident we were living very close to each other, about two doors apart, so we saw each other every day. I think we both felt isolated up there, as if we didn't have much in common with the other students. We found ourselves in households with people who didn't know who was in the charts, let alone who was in the indie charts. We were still young enough to feel that your alignment to certain types of pop music was more important than anything else - that's why we felt very quickly that there was a kind of alliance between the two of us.

We went to whatever gigs there were - there weren't very many. We used to do some music-making together, mostly covers. We didn't know Everything But The Girl would be so successful and I don't think we would even have been that interested, it would have been so far removed from our experience of making music that it wasn't even a goal we thought about. I think you only do ever tend to think of one step above where you are at the time, and we were thinking 'well, it would be really cool to be in the indie charts', but we certainly didn't think about mainstream pop success.

Our relationship has been made a lot easier by the fact that our progress since we were students has been entirely equal. We've stayed on common ground, in an unusually close way.

I'm not sure how many people know we are a couple - quite a lot now perhaps. It can be tricky, because one thing that pop thrives on is there being some hint of sexual availability - it's one of the things that makes pop stars appealing, and if you're known as a couple that's immediately taken away, you're spoken for. It changes your image. Different people respond in different ways, some people perhaps quite like it - I think people feel they know us quite well and feel quite close to us because they know we're a couple.

When Ben was ill, we went through quite different experiences, so at the end of it, instead of feeling really bonded by it, I think we felt we had a lot of talking to do, to actually tell each other what had happened. Ben had been through a lot of physical suffering which I couldn't imagine. There was a long period in the middle where he was actually kept unconscious for a week so there was a whole week of my life when he was asleep, and he has no inkling of what happened during that week, the thoughts that went through my head. We had to talk to each other a lot to regain some of that ground.

Marriage is not really there as an issue most of the time - it sometimes pops into our heads as a thought, a bit vague. I think both of our sets of parents might have the idea that it would be nice if we were married, but they're used to us being together, and they've seen other children of theirs get married and get divorced. It's certainly not a problem with them - I think they look at us and think 'Well, as long as they're working it out, that's the most you can expect.'-

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