Try reaching the UK Top 40 without a carefully orchestrated publicity campaign. Go on, have a go. Yeah, it’s tricky, isn’t it? But London’s Art Brut have come as near as dammit with their first three singles, and the current one, “Emily Kane”, is an incongruous and highly welcome presence this week at number 41. Their expanding profile, achieved with little more than a clutch of bewildered articles penned by music journalists furiously playing catch-up, has given hope to a mass of guitar-toting teenagers who view them as guerilla heroes in a scene composed largely of carefully sculpted corporate dross. And although Art Brut’s oblique guitars, disarmingly honest lyrics and wilful disobedience has made them as many enemies as friends, they might yet provide this year’s most unlikely Top Of The Pops appearance.

Singer Eddie Argos and guitarist Chris Chinchilla (they go a bundle on aliases) sit in the cheapest pub in the West End, pondering their unlikely rise to prominence. “I’ve only got one theory,” muses Chris, “which is that the internet and revitalisation of fanzine culture is spreading the word. We don’t have any money, we don’t have advertising plastered everywhere. Who knows? Maybe people see us as lovable English rogues?” Their first single, “Formed A Band” announced their arrival on the scene with hilarious sincerity (“We formed a band! Look at us! We formed a band!”) and hinted at their burgeoning ambition (“Stop buying your albums from supermarkets, they only sell things that have charted – and Art Brut? We’ve only just started!”) Its ramshackle confidence split opinion furiously, not least at Rough Trade, the independent record label who released the record. “The label boss came to see us play, and he walked out after 10 minutes, saying we were childish,” laughs Eddie. They were dropped immediately, and plans for an album were shelved. Chris admits that early gigs were scrappy affairs. “We used to stop songs in the middle and explain what they were about. But by being bad, we’ve learned how to pretend to be good. And we know how to make 2 chords go a lot further than we used to.” Maverick record label Fierce Panda certainly took notice; they are now mustering their meagre resources to propel Art Brut chartward.

That 2-chord simplicity is matched by the directness of Eddie’s lyrics, which have led to misconceptions about how many levels of irony he’s working on. The answer is: none whatsoever. “The lyrics catch people off guard, so they get this idea that Eddie’s taking the piss,” says Chris. “But I’m deadly serious,” butts in Eddie. “Emily Kane is a real person, she’s not made up. And it’s not comedy, – it’s heartbreaking. I couldn’t even bring myself to sing that song at first.” When they first performed “Emily Kane” at gigs last year, with its stabbing refrain of “I’m still in love with my old flame”, Eddie would plead with the audience that if any of them knew where Emily was, to beg her to get in touch with him. Eventually she did; she agreed to write the press release for the single, and Eddie met up with her for the first time in 10 years. “Fortunately it turned out that I wasn’t still in love with her, which was a relief,” he says. “I guess that what I was actually in love with was being 15 years old, and getting very drunk.”

Eddie’s reliance on alcohol has clearly not diminished over the last 10 years; his acerbic and unrestrained onstage presence is a million miles away from the friendly, disorganised mess of a man who’s sitting here pushing his fringe out of his eyes. “I’ve got no willpower, so the tour manager sounds a ‘booze alarm’ two hours before we go onstage. That gives me enough time to warm my head up and stop me being quite as shy.” As they gain confidence, the band have started selling out their unpredictable live shows across the UK, mainly to evangelical teenagers wearing home-made Art Brut t-shirts who dig the absence of cooler-than-thou posturing, and view Eddie as an eccentric anti-hero. “The gigs are just this huge swell of enthusiasm that put you on a high for days afterwards,” says Chris. With their UK tour imminent (they play Koko, formerly Camden Palace, next Tuesday) and their debut album “Bang Bang Rock And Roll” released later this month, there’s definitely a euphoria in the Art Brut camp. Eddie has decided to celebrate by attempting to grow a moustache, which, after 5 days, is so feeble that it actually makes him look younger. “I’m thinking of thickening it up with mascara, but right now there’s nothing to thicken up.” A Top Of The Pops appearance might remain his ultimate ambition, but today he’s only got one wish: “A big Tom Selleck moustache, just in time for the tour.” Eddie, we wish you the very best of luck – on both counts.