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(, in which the girls face off against some local toughs for a croquet match in a junkyard. If there is a hidden meaning to this, it's VERY well hidden.)

Anyway, they're probably going to be around for a bit, so it seems a good idea to get to know them as people, find out what they are all about. For example, are they feminists? Are they actually confused woman-hating feminist-chauvinists? What makes them the flag-holders for what girls can or cannot do, hmm? Are they experts?Are they secretly men in disguise, seeking to bring about the downfall of womankind by belittling their ability to pluck a tennis ball out of the air?

Well, no, obviosly not. But I did chat to Phoebe on the phone recently, and here's what we talked about instead.

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ChartBlog: Can you see a point, between right now and the very near future, where you get so tired of answering questions about your band's name that one of you has a massive diva strop?
Phoebe: Ohh, we're close to it! No, d'you know what, we were asking for it, weren't we? We didn't want to be called something typical, like a typical girlband name. We wanted to be a bit different, a bit weird. We came up with loads of names, like we were literally going to be called the 11:59s, until the last minute.*

ChartBlog: And, as a new girl band, do you get a lot of people saying you're all 'feisty', 'frisky' or 'foxy'?
Phoebe: [Thinks] No-one says we're 'foxy' and stuff. No-one's really called us anything! I mean we are a bit feisty, we're a bit out-there...we're more fed up of people throwing stuff at us to see if we can catch.

ChartBlog: Ah, then you are not going to enjoy this literal question either, sorry. With the advent of the she-pee, is there now ANYTHING that boys can do that girls cannot do?
Phoebe: [LONG think] No, I don't believe so. I think that...basically our name, we're taking the mick, like it's ironic, like we're saying that girls CAN catch, and girls can do anything they want to, if they put their minds to it, so it's like a play on words. We actually did challenges recently, Jess did Girls Can't DJ, I did Girls Can't Graffiti and Daizy did Girls Can't Rock Climb, and we proved that we can do those things. So it's a cool name. There's so many things you can do with it.

ChartBlog: As a man, I have difficulty understanding how multitasking works. Can you explain it to me without making it sound like, yes, you're doing three things at the same time, only you're not doing any of them very well?
Phoebe: OK, for an example, if you were on your computer, and I was trying to talk to you about something really important, you wouldn't be responding to me correctly, you'd be like [distracted] "...yeah ...yeah". You can't do more than one thing at once, you don't concentrate enough. Does that make sense?

ChartBlog: So if I came to you with a problem, something I was really upset about, you'd be quite happy typing an email, while I bared my soul?
Phoebe: Yeah!

ChartBlog: Cos that just seems rude.
Phoebe: Yeah, but girls can do it, cos they can multitask.

ChartBlog: So what we're saying is that girls are ruder than boys.
Phoebe: I think that that's not true.

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And there we have it. Conclusive proof. Now if only we could be sure what it is proof of...

Download: Out now
CD Released: August 3rd

Girls Can't Catch present The 5:19 Show

(Fraser McAlpine)

*In years to come, as I look back over a very long spell of interviewing pop stars for a living, I think my greatest regret - greater than annoying Kelly Jones from Stereophonics, greater than falling apart in front of Ronan Keating, and greater than confusing the heck out of matey from The Academy Is - will be failing to realise that the sentence "we were literally going to be called the 11:59s, until the last minute" is total comedy genius. I am ashamed.