POP MUSIC / Talk: Nietzsche boy: Mark E Smith told it like it was at the ICA this week. Joseph Gallivan listened

The Fall are the absolute antithesis of everything that is commonly known as rock and pop culture,' said the novelist Michael Bracewell, introducing Mark E Smith to the ICA. That much we already knew. Smith was supposed to talk about being a self-taught artist, but like one of his badly typed lyrics, this was just an outline. Judging by their eagerness to laugh at the smallest gesture (the little finger cocked as he swigged from the beer bottle) the fans had come for the added extras of a live performance.

So what was it like being on Top of the Pops for the first time in 14 years last week? ' 'S'all right.' Cue general hilarity. 'What was it like being at school? ' 'S'all right.' Audience explodes with laughter. Even Bracewell, looking in his sharp suit the absolute antithesis of everything that is commonly known as the Fall fan, found his straight- man act increasingly cracked by smirks. 'The only musical person in our family was Uncle Joe.' What did he play?, enquired the interviewer gingerly. 'The saw.'

Through his method of repeated interruption, however, Smith began finally to give a little. He told how the Fall had kept the fawning Nirvana from cadging a lift off them in LA, how he is plagued by Scousers asking him where he got his shoes, and how he'll never work in the theatre again. 'The theatre was an even shittier business than the rock business. I nearly had a nervous breakdown doing Hey Luciani] - six weeks in a basement in bloody London. And nobody gets paid.'

He likes Fellini. He wrote 'Telephone Thing' when his phone was being tapped. He lectures to the James Joyce Society at Cambridge University. He likes Jim Thompson novels, Wyndham Lewis, and watches daytime television. And he won't have papers in his 'ouse. 'These journalists are used to talking to cretins every day, and obviously their brains are going like sludge. This woman rang me up from the Sunday Times and wanted my Top 10- books. She'd only heard of three of the 14. I said, 'Raymond Chandler, y'know, the one all the programmes imitate?' She goes, 'So you read Nietzsche at 15?' I said 'What sort of books do you read, luv?' She said, 'I'm just getting into Jane Austen.' She's 34.'

No books are due from him and no box sets of the Peel sessions. 'I won't let 'im. 'S my Fall.' 'Where d'you get your shoes?' asked one wag. 'From a shoe shoppe,' he replied, dropping in a trademark plosive for the fans, before pulling off his microphone and leaving.