After leaving iconic, ironic glam band The Darkness in 2006, lead singer and guitarist Justin Hawkins went through rehab before founding new schlock cock rock group Hot Leg, who’ve just finished touring the USA. “We were going to be called Bon Jaw, and have a French theme, with stripy jumpers, strings of onions and rickety old bicycles instead of motorbikes” he tells us. We asked him some silly questions, and he obliged us with some bonkers answers…

Do you collect anything weird?
I’ve got three sets of cat testicles.

From just one animal? Maybe that’s why cats always land on their feet; they’re weighed down by their multiple ball sacks.
Sadly, they’re from three separate pets being neutered. I got the vet to put the testicles in jars of preserving fluid and I keep them on top of the mixing desk in my studio. They look like big meaty sperms. I think having such a physical manifestation of testosterone in my line of vision helps me to make more manly rock music. Plus, I’m just obsessed with cats. I think about them all the time. When I’m on tour I’ll visit charity shops to search for porcelain, metal and wooden feline ornaments. At one point, my suitcase contained only a few bits of clothing, a skipping rope for keeping fit, and a brass cat.

What does your orgasm face look like?
Like somebody squinting to read train times. A combination of concern and eye-strain.

Does that mean when you visit the opticians you feel like you’re orgasming?
Those Specsavers ladies in white coats are definitely a turn-on.

If you could film your ultimate music video, what and who would it involve?
I’d remake a condensed version of 1980s ‘swords and sorcery’ B-movie Hawk The Slayer, known for its crazy soundtrack. I’d cast Ian McShane as broadsword-wielding hero Hawk, and make him style his hair the same as it was during his Lovejoy days.

You’re famous for having flames tattooed just above your crotch. Had any new body mods lately?
Last year I tried to have a tattoo of my name lasered off my left upper arm so I could get something else tattooed over the area. But it got infected and the skin raised up, as though I’d been branded. So I had it emphasised with blue ink instead of trying to erase it again. It’s a process I’ve called ‘icing’.

Does it taste like icing? Have you licked it?
It’s more savoury, like those little salty liquorice car-shaped sweets you can buy from Ikea.

Do you believe in ghosts?
As a child, I had a load of lyrics from Abba songs written on sheets of paper that were held together with a bulldog clip and fixed to my bedroom wall so I could learn them. The papers cast odd shadows that I’d imagine were ghosts. I was haunted by a Swedish supergroup!

I’d love to see a ghostie for real, though. I went through a phase of repeatedly dreaming about a girl in a white dress named Jessica, who I became convinced was buried in my back garden. I tried to do a seancy-type thing where I asked her to either contact me so I could help her with whatever was motivating her to visit me in my sleep, or else leave me alone… to speak up, or fuck off! I was a bit disappointed that the dreams immediately stopped. She fucked off.

What about aliens?
I’ve never seen one, but I think my dad has. There was an airbase close to where I grew up in Lowestoft that was always plagued by rumours of secret government tests and alien interaction. My father won’t talk about his experience when I ask for more detail, though.

The Martians probably gave him an anal probe. That’s why he’s too shy to chat about it.
Probably. I was already alive at the time he had his encounter, otherwise I’d suggest that perhaps that’s how I was conceived – by my dad getting his bum probed by a little green man.

What’s the strangest thing a fan has ever given you?
One foreign female fan started off by sending me a box of her diplomas and important personal documents. Then she posted me a letter saying that this was just the beginning; she was sending all her belongings over in instalments, in preparation to come and live with me.

Crates of items began to arrive from her, including five three-litre containers of maple syrup! What’s more, she was shipping all this to The Darkness’s PO box address. Did she think she was going to come and live in a post office box? To keep herself in storage for me?

Has anything ever gone wrong onstage?
I flew around on a giant white tiger during one Darkness tour, suspended from the ceiling by ropes. I was supposed to play a guitar solo at the same time, but the first time I tried it at Nottingham Arena my instrument cut out and I was just coasting over the crowd in silence.

I swapped my guitar for one that worked as soon as possible, but by that point the tiger had moved as far as it could, so the only thing the stage managers could do was put it in reverse. I played the solo while the tiger swung backwards, ass first. It was like something out of This Is Spinal Tap.

Necrophilia, coprophilia, or bestiality – which would you choose?
If I opted for coprophilia, what kind of poo acts would be involved? Could I indulge in a Cleveland Steamer (crapping on a woman’s chest before rolling your penis/body in the mess)? Or an Alabama Hot Pocket (pooing inside a woman’s vagina before sex)?

Or if I went for necro, I’d play around with a bit of munging (while one person gives a corpse oral sex, the other treads on the body’s stomach to push decaying matter out into the first person’s mouth) so long as I could be the one doing the stamping. Can you tell I’ve been entertaining myself with the sick online Glossary Of Perversion?

SHAMELESS PLUG! Hot Leg’s debut album, Red Light Fever, is out now. Check out Teamhotleg.com