Scouting For Girls are back with a new single, album and nationwide tour. Frontman Roy Stride talks about the album, Everybody Wants To Be On TV, released on April 12. He explains how it had to be bigger and better than their 800,000-selling debut, his love of writing memorable pop songs and why he'll do whatever he can to stop bass player Greg going back to his day job.

By Andy Welch Lady GaGa's kooky new video for Telephone places her firmly in the overblown school of popstars - whose graduates include David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Madonna. Their style is ethereal, otherworldly and untouchable.

Sometimes, however, we want our music heroes to be normal, everyday human beings, and there in lies the secret to Scouting For Girls' success.

"We're just normal blokes I think, we're only successful because our songs are so catchy," says the band's frontman Roy Stride - there aren't many pop stars called Roy, are there?

"You only have to look at our gigs to see we've got fans of all ages and backgrounds. We're like the Ant and Dec of the music world!"

Thanks to the 850,000 sales of their 2007 self-titled debut album, Scouting For Girls - a pun on Robert Baden Powell's 1908 manual Scouting For Boys - are one of the country's biggest bands.

Expectations surrounding follow-up Everybody Wants To Be On TV are high, but Roy is very confident the album will meet them.

"We didn't want to just recreate the first record," he says. "Most second records are artistically crap and commercially disappointing, so we knew we had to avoid falling into that trap. We wanted to make a second album better than the first, and sell so well that we could do a third and a fourth, that's our target.

"Plus, we can't have Greg [Churchouse, bass player] going back to work at Threshers. He always just looks so happy not to be working there any more. Actually, he can't go back, can he, it closed down. That's the impact him leaving had on the chain!

"It's a cliche," he continues, "but it's hard making a second album - you don't have the same amount of time as you did on your first - but luckily our label (Epic) were really busy working with JLS last year so we didn't hear from them and they just let us get on with what we were doing," he says.

"Everybody Wants To Be On TV is a step up from our first album, but it keeps the quirky, sing-along aspect that people love."

Had it not been for the intervention of the MD of the band's record label, however, this might not have been the case.

At the 2008 Brit awards, Roy and bandmates Greg and drummer Pete Ellard presented their label boss with a CD of demos. They'd been recorded in Roy's hotel room during downtime on the last dates of their UK tour.

The day after handing the disc over, Roy was expecting a call congratulating him on another batch of instant classic pop songs. That wasn't quite how it worked out.

"I thought he'd be on the phone saying 'You've cracked it, this is what we've been waiting for', but nothing.

"The day after, still nothing. Eventually, four days later I got a call saying that he didn't think there were any singles on there.

"I was like 'WHAT!?' I couldn't believe it, but I was only half annoyed. The other half of me said 'I'm going to write some really good songs to show him what we can do', plus I think he was bluffing as a way of making us come up with the best songs we could possibly write."

If the MD was playing a game, it certainly worked, as Roy returned to the drawing board to come up with a load more songs, so many, in fact, that when it came to selecting what would be on the forthcoming album, the trio had to filter through between 40 and 50 songs.

"I've really learned something writing this album..." says Roy. "I thought I knew how to write a song before, and it was only when Nick said that that I thought about what actually makes a great pop song.

"A great song is where everything works together; melodies, lyrics and music. On the first album I just thought it was about being catchy, so as a result I think we've really moved on. There are still the melodies here, but it's more grown up."

Current single This Ain't A Love Song is the perfect comeback single; at once familiar and undoubtedly Scouting For Girls, but also bigger, almost Keane-like in tone.

Elsewhere on the album there are songs such as the urgent Good Time Girl, the Buggles-inspired Famous and On The Radio, and Posh Girls, which features one of the best rhyming couplets you'll hear this year.

"... a little bit scared, a little apprehensive, he was just a boy from the local comprehensive," it goes.

"I don't think there's another band in the country that could get away with that," laughs Roy. "I'm not sure we have yet. We'll have to see!

"I write a lot about falling in love and breaking up," he says, drawing to a close. "I don't know who said it, but someone once said the best songs are about the first five minutes and the last five minutes of a relationship, which I agree with.

"Most people have been there and I try to harness that, but I think about a situation from a character's perspective.

"The emotions will be ones I've experienced, so there's a truth there, but it doesn't have to be what I'm going through at that moment - I'd be so miserable if it was like that," he says. "Can you imagine? If you had to go through tremendous pain to be a decent artist, you'd have to live an awful life.

"Crime writers don't have to be murderers do they? That's the really creative challenge for me, to look through the eyes of a character but for it to still be personal.

"When people listen to your music, they have to be able to connect with it and feel what you're singing about.

"And that's why people like us, because we're normal blokes who sing about things everyone can understand."

Extra time - Scouting For Girls :: Roy, Greg and Pete all hail from Ruislip, north west London, and met in school.

:: They only formed the band in 2005, although they had played music together for several years beforehand.

:: The band's debut album is nearly at triple platinum status. They've also been nominated for a string of awards, including Best New Act at the 2008 MTV Europe Awards, and three Brit awards in 2009.

:: Roy has recently been writing songs for other artists - although he won't say who - and has also been working with former-Robbie Williams collaborator Guy Chambers.

:: Pete is "the world's biggest" Emmerdale fan, according to Roy. The band recently recorded a live radio session from the soap's pub, The Woolpack. "Pete once said in an interview he's only doing music so he can get a part in Emmerdale, and it nearly came true," said Roy.