Nicky Wire is reminiscing. For the self-professed "nerdy historian" of Manic Street Preachers, the wistfulness is not misplaced. New album "Postcards From a Young Man" is Manic Street Preachers' 10th: a landmark under any criterion, but Wire is keen to accentuate what a milestone it is for a group of childhood friends from a deeply unfashionable mining town in South Wales.
"I've been in the same class as James (Dean Bradfield, vocals/guitar) since I was 5," the bassist says, beaming. "That's really unhealthy, isn't it?"
Quite how Manic Street Preachers arrived this far is testimony to the perseverance of rock's great survivors. Recalling just how unlikely this all seemed takes little imagination. Exploding onto an unsuspecting world in the late 1980s armed with a love of Guns N' Roses and Sylvia Plath, this "mess of eyeliner and spray-paint" boasted they'd sell 16 million albums and immediately split. Their thirst for infamy suggested an enduring career was implausible.