Your new album, everything is borrowed, is out this week. Pleased? Relieved?
I'm really, really pleased. Mainly that it's just bloody finished! It was tough coming up with another new formula. If you come up with something different and it doesn't work, you end up looking silly...

It sounds a lot more upbeat than the last album, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living...
Yeah. That's weird, because I didn't feel particularly bad when I was making the last album, but people just didn't take to it! An album takes me such a long time to make that by the time I've finished, I'm desperate to do something else, which I guess is why the new one sounds so different. I get frustrated very easily.

Speaking of which, we've read that you're "sick of The fucking Streets". Is that really true?
I was mostly joking. What I actually said was that I'm sick of talking about chip shops and kebabs! Me and "The Streets" are fine. I'm just ready to move on. My next album is going to be the last one. I've already started on it. It's going to be futuristic and a bit sci-fi, but very upbeat. It'll probably be the danciest record I've made.

And then what? Retirement?
It'll be films after that, definitely.

Really? OK, pitch the first Mike Skinner film to ZOO...
OK. It'll start quite gritty, but then quickly become very surreal. I think people would expect a Shane Meadows, This Is England-style thing from me, but I'd be more like a Michel Gondry-type [director of Be Kind Rewind]. I'd be the UK's Gondry. Which sounds a bit like UK Garage. Which is probably what I should be talking about!

So what about the music?
Well, I won't have a record deal any more, so I'll be able to do as I please. I'm looking forward to making brilliant music without any pressure from a record company. But then I'm quite deluded - I always think what I'm doing is great!

You've collaborated with Muse. Any other rock bands you might work with in your "retirement"?
Indie's on the way out. It's peaked. It's become the really easy, lazy pop music that sort of appeals to everyone but never does anything exciting or revolutionary. When I started, my first album got good reviews but there was no pressure to mould me into anything like bands have now. Back then, Madonna was paying the private school bills of record label bosses' kids. Now I am!

Right, using some of your own song titles, here are some rapid-fire questions. Who's currently Fit But You Know It?
I'd go for Sienna Miller. In a slightly negative way. But, you know, I don't think any of us can judge other people's lives. We're all capable of dark, evil and fun things...

Who would you tell to Dry Your Eyes, Mate?
Continuing the Sienna Miller theme, I'd go with her ex, Rhys Ifans! I love him. What he says to the press is exactly what you say to your mates but never have the bottle to say out loud. He's got no quality control over what comes out of his mouth.

To which celebrity would you say: Don't Mug Yourself?
Gordon Brown. He's probably the greatest Prime Minister ever, but he just looks so terrible. I just feel bad for him. He does this weird thing with his mouth: he sticks his tongue out and licks his lip. He's disgusting!

You once said Geezers Need Excitement. What makes an exciting night out for Mike Skinner these days?
Playing a Streets gig, in front of 75,000 people and getting them all to "Go Low".

Excuse us? "Go Low"?
There's a lot of spellbinding tricks at my gigs these days. I'm the Derren Brown of UK pop music! "Go Low" is the classic Streets trick where I tell everyone to get down towards the floor - it looks amazing. Then there's the "Don't Know", where I get everyone to chat to people they don't know. And the latest one is "The Moses", where the crowd parts and I run to the back of the audience and crowd-surf back. Oh, and I'm attempting a new mobile trick where I get everyone to flash their phones in time to the music. It could save thousands on lighting costs at gigs! Radiohead claim they're up with all that environmental shit, but I'm leading the green way!

PUB FACT: The final Streets album, Computers & Blues, will use only live musicians and scrap samples completely

| The new Streets album, everything is borrowed, is out now