Written by: Gary Ryan
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How old? Gary Numan - once the living embodiment of electronic music, and he of `Are Friends Electric?' fame - seems to have been around forever, looming inauspiciously in the background like one of those paintings on Scooby Doo; you only notice he's there when the eyes move.

Indeed, you sneakily suspect his last electric aural experiment was a hearing aid. Seriously! He could be deaf. When groupies fake orgasms now, they have to sign `Ooohh.' Or write it down. These days, I'm guessing `sex toys' mean `post-it notes'.

So it comes as something of a surprise that Gary is only 45. He's come a long way from the pale, nerdy electro-clown topping the charts with `Are Friends Electric?' back in 1979. In the days of yore, you used to shamefully ask shop assistants for a copy of Playboy to hide your Gary Numan record inside. Not anymore. Sssh, whisper it, Gary Numan is finally cool; revered by Beck and Damon Albarn, sampled by the Sugababes, and recast as a pop pioneer and Goth-boy icon.

"Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails said that when he heard Plastic Principle, it changed the way he thought about music," beams Gary. "I'm a huge NIN fan so that meant a lot to me."

There's no doubt that Gary loves being revered by boyz so hip they have a Z in their name. "Last year, I had two songs at number one in two different charts," he enthuses, "Rip was number one in the Kerrang chart, and `Freak like Me', containing a sample from `Are Friends Electric?' was number one in the official chart."

"I'm much more proud of that than when I first went to number one," he says, "I honestly believe it's much more easy to become famous than it is to stay there."

He should know - it's only a few years since Gary was submerged in debt (`Are Friends Used to Be Electric Until They Cut Us Off', perhaps?); living in a house that was collapsing around him.

"I'm definitely more proud of my achievement this time," he says, "I think of it like this: you fall off a ship in the middle of an ocean, you've got a 2000-mile swim to land, and you do it. And you're proud of yourself. Because you do it against the odds."

Yes Matthew, tonight Gary is David Brent.

His new album, Hybrid, reworks Numan's finest hours - something he squirms at. "I'm finding it difficult to muster to the positiveness that the record company want me to have," he says, "It makes me uncomfortable talking about something that's kind of reinventing the wheel. I have a chip on my shoulder about going back to old stuff."

Unsurprisingly then, he's rejected all offers to perform `80s Here and Now tours. "I deliberately cut myself off from the `80s. Those things have the tendency to come back and bite you on the ass. I'm asked to do them all the time, and not even my fingernail has been tempted.'

"The first one I was offered was in 1991. And I was finished. I had no money, my career was down the toilet; and even then, I just thought that if I do this now, I've given up. Because it's like admitting defeat and saying you have nothing new to offer."

At the end of the Seventies, Gary stood ahead of the pack as Britain's best-selling recording artist, with his debut single `Are Friends Electric?' shifting a million copies, and its follow-up, `Cars' becoming an instant classic. However, his chart success proved to be something of a double-edged sword. Right at the start of his career, Gary was splattered with venom.

"I felt at the time like I was at the centre of a massive amount of vitriol," recalls Gary, "My Dad had a petrol bomb put under his car, and my mum had to be put under police protection after someone threatened to kill her. I couldn't go a day without someone yelling `Wanker!' at me in the street, or `We're going to kill your dog.'"

"I think is was all due to envy", explains Gary, "When you become famous, people see you going from being on the same level as them to living a life of dreams, and they resent you for it."

Even David Bowie, the spaceboy with the golden halo, had him removed from the set of Kenny Everett's TV Christmas Special. At school, Gary had been a huge Bowie fan. "The amount of kicks in the bollocks I took for him!" he exclaims. "The last thing he said was `Whatever has gone on between us can't take away from the fact that Gary Numan has given us two of the finest moments in English pop history."

Aww, I coo, it's just like the end of an episode of The Golden Girls. Cheesecake, Gary?

"20 years too late," he bristles, "To be honest, I don't care about him. I don't particularly like his music; he hasn't done anything in the last 20 years that's been relevant to me."

"I understand why he did it. I was outselling him four to one, and he must have been surrounded by people constantly telling him his career's in decline. That must have created insecurity."

Still, Gary reckons that he didn't help matters. One of the most recurrent criticisms bandied around is that he was glacier. You can picture Disney on Ice adding `Gary Numan' to its tour dates. True, Gary mimicked Mr Frosty (does he give birth to children in six fruity flavours?), but this was because he suffered from Asperger's syndrome.

"I only found this out recently," he explains, "but it's a mild form of autism. It impairs basic human interaction, and means I also misread facial signals." He's fine during interviews (if anything, he's a little loquacious), where "there are clearly defined parameters." However, "if I met you at a party, I wouldn't know what to say to you, would flounder, and eventually give up trying."

Eventually, Gary's disability/illness/mutant power took its toll. "It all started to go wrong when I became famous," he says, "And I started listening to advice I'd always stubbornly ignored. When you step off the road you've been on, you end up in the woods. You lose your unique vision on the world. Gemma led me out of the glade and back onto the road again."

I wonder if David Brent ever catches himself sounding like Gary Numan.

He first met his adoring wife of ten years, Gemma, when she was a hardcore fan, following him up and down the country. As it happens, Gary was never much into groupie baiting. "No, I'm a quiet sort and I hate it. I think people like Liam Gallagher really make the business. Even back then, I wasn't sleeping with three men and two women. I just tend to stand at the back near the soundcheck, because it has the best sound quality." Incidentally, Gary he's "never been drunk." So are lines more your (nose) bag? "No, I've never done drugs. My best friend overdosed, so it warned me off them." In fact, Gary may be the first Amish pop icon (`Are Friends Non-Electric'). Nowadays, "Gemma receives more offers from groupies than me. She's a fanny magnet."

By the late Eighties, Gary was all but finished. "I was in desperate need of money" he says gloomily, "I regret some of the things I did." Did you ever do Through the Keyhole, Gary? "Thank fuck, no, but I did worse." What kind of thing was being offered to you? "A duet with Zoë Ball on The Big Breakfast."

Gary credits Gemma with reigniting his career. "She helped me see that I was in denial. My reasons for writing songs had completely changed. She helped it become a hobby again." For his rehabilitation, Gary returned to his roots, as a guitarist in a punk band. "The stuff I'm doing at the moment is very radio-unfriendly. Some of the old fans don't like it. It's funny because people got into me because I was offering something new, and now they'd have me musically stagnate."

His industrial rock direction coincided with a tribute album featuring covers by such luminaries as Beck, as well as samples by Groove Armada and The Sugababes; crystallising him as an icon.

"I've been phenomenally rich and unbelievably poor," he says, "It gives you a much more even perspective, and you can appreciate what you've got."

"And I can honestly say I'm happy now."

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