With former Mansun frontman Paul Draper now enjoying a solo career after a number of years in the wilderness, his old band’s debut has been re-released in a special 21-year anniversary edition. I remember being off my tits in Ibiza when Paul Oakenfold’s ‘Wide Open Space’ remix came on in Pacha and it blew me away.

After we added the strings to the beginning of the track it started to sound like a James Bond theme, so we changed its title to something slightly more humorous. Listening back to the lyrics I’m reeling off characters from the fictitious small northern town where the album is set, ‘Skinima Nosebreak’ ‘Fatima Toothpaste’ ‘Penelope Cheapskate’ ‘Claudia Farmgate’, not your average lyric for the era really and still makes me chuckle to this day that something so absurd hit No. It doesn’t make sense in this era of streaming and the resurgence of vinyl, however the idea of this track is to reinforce the idea that the album was a skit of a conceptual record, not in fact one itself, which is obviously a paradox, which my younger self would have thought hilarious. Wide Open Space" became a dance anthem after being remixed by DJ and producer Paul Oakenfold under the production alias Perfecto.The amount of times I’ve sat in pubs trying to explain to people what ‘Stripper Vicar’ is all about is mind boggling, and in the mists of time, I’m not sure I can even remember myself. We originally recorded this song with a hip hop groove and some exceptional swearing that was rejected by the record company, these versions appear on the outtakes disc of the box set and its really interesting to hear these early versions and how we finally arrived at the finished version of this song that closed the album. This remix was included on Oakenfold's compilation Resident: Two Years of Oakenfold at Cream, as an indicator of being one of the most played songs at major UK nightclub Cream, as well as in nightclubs around the world, over the 1997–1999 period.

Although this song sat neatly with the narrative of the plot, I thought I’d challenge my own rule on this song, I remember the chorus being really emotional, and it still feels like that now. I was planning ahead and already had the idea of a skit on a concept record already written down, this song does what it says on the tin and describes a particularly debauched night in the life of the characters on the record. After a lot of head scratching it was cut down to seven minutes for the album and finally to a three minute radio track to accompany the fantastic promo video shot by Roman Coppola.My fondest memory of this track is playing all the instruments on it and being delighted with my drum take that I’d done in one go. The album was preceded by four singles, the first of which "Egg Shaped Fred" was released a year prior.