Not the most beautiful band in the world. Or even anywhere near it. But who needs Max Factor when you've got reel appeal? Our man on the spot(s): Chris Maillard. Pogue in the eye: George Bodnar

There's a little pub in the back end of Camden Town, in that part between the High Street and the canal, where the Renault-5-and-asparagus-quiche folk don't go.

It serves good Guinness, warming hot port or Bushmills Irish whiskey with a slice of lemon and a few cloves, and it has a good pool table and a handy phone.

This is the Pogues office. Their manager Frank and the ever-lovely Shane are to be found there using the bar phone or occupying the pool table whenever they're not out playing their rowdy rebel songs to the degenerate public.

And it also doubles as their interview room. Which is not entirely unreasonable, as the best way to interview the Pogues is undoubtedly to sit across a pub table, set down a few drinks and try (usually unsuccessfully) to steer the resultant conversation the way you want.

Their chat is not unlike their music. It is unrepentantly manic, verging on the drunken, uncompromisingly and fiercely proud, and it combines the fire of Punk with the age-old spirit of Celtic romanticism.

And it doesn't necessarily live up to your expectations, either. You can ask, as I did, how the band's crazed performances went down in Europe. Shane took a deep breath and an even deeper swig of his Guiness, fixed his mad pop-eyed stare on me, opened that horrifying dentists' nightmare of a mouth and said...

"The Folk tradition isn't just an English thing. There's a lot of other countries where the old traditions are kept going much more strongly. Like in Germany, for instance, where Irish folk is really big. And in France, there's Breton music which is of course just like Irish or Scots music, because they're Celts too.

"And one region of France, called Acadia, has a form of music which eventually became American cajun. Cajun is a corruption of 'Acadian'.

"The Scandinavian countries have strong traditions as well, using the same kind of instruments as Celtic music, such as pipes and fiddles. Even Arabic music has some similarities; that and Indian folk music use the same scales, diatonic scales, that are used in the really old varieties of Irish folk, and some of the harder, more wild reels have a definite similarity in sound to Arabic tunes. The uillean pipes, for instance, which is the Irish equivalent of the bagpipes, has quite an Oriental sound to it.

"So the answer to the question is, of course we go down well in Europe. Because they appreciate our background, they know where our roots are, and they also appreciate the things we took from Punk, the energy and so on.

"And what's more, we're a bloody great band live."

There, I suspect, lies the key to the Pogues' success. They are shortly to take their reelin roadshow to the US of A, still a place where live bands are at a premium instead of at a dead end, and they're confident that they'll raise a storm.

"You see," intoned intense tin whistle maestro Spider, "Last year we played about three hundred gigs. That's a lot. That's where we earn our living. We have to play a lot of gigs to make it pay, but it does pay. And the consequence of all that playing live is that we are very good at it. We can put most bands to shame when we get on to a stage.

"When we first started off that was what we did. We played live, used a few contacts we had and talked people into giving us gigs. Then, when we'd played at a place once, they always seemed to want us back again. And it went on from there.

"It helped a lot being based in London, because we could just turn up on people's doorsteps all the time and demand to play. And it worked. The more we played, the better we got, and now we know we're one of the best bands there is on stage."

But how do you go about encapsulating that live energy and putting it on vinyl? Spider?

"Er... we haven't. Not yet, anyway. I don't think we're as good on record as we are live. It's something that we must be able to get round somehow, but I don't know how yet."

"We might do a live album," interjected Shane. "That seems like a good idea. Mind you, I've never heard a live album that completely captured the atmosphere of a gig, that gave you the excitement of being there."

"What about that Rolling Stones album, 'Get Your Ya-Yas Out'?" suggested Spider.

"Fuck Off," said Shane politely. "I don't listen to that stuff."

So what do you listen to?

"All sorts of things. Loads of stuff. You can't just listen to one sort of thing, you know. You can't just listen to what's fashionable now and ignore everything else.

"We would have never got anywhere if we hadn't been listening to a sort of music that was not just unfashionable, but really, really unheard of. When we started Irish folk was just not thought about. There were all those bands with synthesizers and fuckin' funny haircuts and all and that didn't do anything for me at all.

"So I went back to the music I was brought up listening to, the stuff that was played when I was young, and took it from there. When we started we were so different that we attracted attention instantly. But we only made so many people take notice because we weren't like anything else around at the time. And if we had just listened to what was fashionable we wouldn't be here now."

So you didn't have an image?

"No, no, no. You've got it wrong. We do have an image, a very strong image. Certainly for a long time we all wore dark suits on stage, shiny shoes, and so on. Dressed like we were going to a wake or a wedding. That was an image.

"It wasn't imposed on us by anybody, though, it was our own choice. And that sort of image is always much stronger than getting some stylist in from the record company to tell you how you should look and how you should act. That looks so false, and it's nothing to do with what we're about."

But you've just recorded at the studio most associated with modern pop perfection, Trevor Horn, ZTT, Paul Morley, Frankie Goes To Hollywood... Sarm West, Horn's own studio.

"Yeah, well, we just thought it would be interesting to see what we could do with a bigger, better-equipped studio. We recorded almost everything before at Elephant Studio in Wapping, which is a good studio, you know, we've got nothing against it, but we decided just for a change we ought to give the big expensive type a go.

"They've got all the gadgets there, but we really didn't need to add much more to our sound. It's big enough already, with eight people in the band."

Eight? That's more than there used to be.

"Yes. We've now got eight permanent members, with Philip Chevron, who joined quite a while ago now, playing guitar, and Terry Woods, who joined fairly recently."

"Philip joined really because Shane couldn't play the guitar and sing at the same time very well," suggested Spider.

"And we've got Terry Woods in the band now," enthused Shane. "He's the best musician I've ever seen, I think. He used to be a founder member of Steeleye Span, but he left before they had their big commercial success, and he's been around the folk scene for years.

"He plays mandola, which is a sort of big mandolin, and cittern, which is a sort of flat-backed bouzouki thing, and all those things like mandolin and banjo and guitar and so on."

Eight must be a lot of people to get on one stage.

"It sort of fills them up, yes. Mind you, we've got two other people, who play uillean pipes and fiddle, that come in to the studio and the bigger gigs. That makes us look like an awful lot of people."

It must be difficult to get that number of people organised to turn up for rehearsals.

"Rehearsals? Rehearsals? You're joking, aren't you? We haven't rehearsed for ages. We play so many gigs we don't need to. When you play 300 gigs in a year you hardly need to practice so you are tight."

Is it going to be another 300 next year?

"Oh, I hope so. I hate the travelling, the soundchecks, all that shit. But I like getting up on stage and playing, that's the thing we do really well and that makes it worthwhile. I like playing live and we're going to keep on doing it until..."

Until what, Shane?

"Until we stop."