Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music

when it's out of ice cream.

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Sing something simple we've brought to...

He was trained as a historian, but metamorphosed into singer and musician.

One half of a duo who's performed everywhere from Shanghai to a Tynside shipyard,

a songwriter who is as likely to cite T.S. Eliot as sing something simple, a public figure, as conscious of Englishness,

as Catholicism, the faith in which he was raised. My guest in extended conversation this evening

is Neil Tennant, one half of Pet Shop Boys, an electronic pop band, and by some way the most successful duo in UK history,

Grammy nominated and three-time's winner of the Brit Awards.

Neil Tennant was born in North Shields in 1954, began to play music early,

and after university and a briefish career in the world of music magazines

launched with Chris Lowe, Pet Shop Boys. The band's performances, both highly stylised and deliberately

minimalist, have always struck me as a curious mixture of Baroque Opera and Dada.

And the bands worked collaboratively with many artists, including Dusty Springfield,

and it's taken on many surprising projects, including a soundtrack for Eisenstein's

battleship Potemkin.

Neil Tenants known as an omnivorous reader.

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