I managed to sneak a few minutes to chat with the enchanting Hilda and Ringo from the loveable rocknroll rebels, London based band Drugdealer Cheerleader, before they prepared to take to the stage at Nottingham's Trash Stock Festival 2006.

Drugdealer Cheerleader have the onstage presence of an army of savage pimps, desperate to steal their crowd and debauch each and every one and September this year sees the band releasing their debut single 'I don't wanna go to school' through Pinnacle records available now at major outlets including HMV.

Q1. Drugdealer Cheerleader is a pretty unusual name, how did you come up with that?

Hilda: You answer that one this time cos I've done that for the last what five interviews! Which one are we going to use today?! Well basically it was his idea, he's the drummer and it's his job to come up with stupid things.

Ringo: Tell you what right, you've read many ways about how we came up with the name. This is probably the closest to the truth. One of our very close friends a guy called Mark, I was round his house. I hadn't seen him for years, he'd been working in Canada and we got really pissed together and he was telling me about one of his friends who had just been done for dealing drugs and that was all in one conversation and then there was this thing on MTV about Cheerleaders and we just went 'oh look Cheerleaders!' Then bizarrely after drinking an awful lot of absinthe I had this weird fucking dream about Cheerleaders and I think it was kind of sent to me in a vision from God and the two words got marred together. I blame Absinthe for that.

Hilda: Do we get sponsorship from Absinthe?

Ringo: That would be good, we don't want Jagermeister we want Absinthe!

Hilda: We want sponsorship by Bupa and Absinthe!

Ringo: It's the worst fucking thing you ever have to do in a band!

Q2. What made you want to form/be in a band?

Hilda: This particular band, I just wanted to play music that I enjoyed playing rather than be in a band that they wanted me to do what they wanted to do. Me and Ringo had been in a band together a while back so I kindve knew how loud mouth and gobby and strange in the head he was, so I wanted him in the band. So we decided to get together and then we just kind of came across the rest of the guys, but we basically wanted to do stuff which at the time when we first formed the band, wasn't fashionable at all but it was great rocknroll music. We thought fuck it, it will come round and its starting to come round now and we might be in fashion! We don't wanna be particularly fashionable but we wanna make lots of money and sell lots of records!

Ringo: When I was younger I used to play the French horn and the trumpet and basically I was in concert bands and stuff and I was like watching and thinking that the bloke at the back on the drums is having way more fun than I am playing this piece of brass shit so I started to play the drums and that was that! (after some piss taking by other members present, no names mentioned) Hang on! I think you'll find that 'You can't always get what you want' by The Stones had the French Horn in the intro, that's was my influence for that!

Interviewer: It's not the sexiest instrument the French Horn!

Ringo: No its not and someone pointed out that neither is the drums cos your at the back and you have to work twice as hard to get noticed but Tommy Lee has since changed all that!

Q3. How did the current line up get together?

Ringo: We have a problem with bass players!

Hilda: Bass players are a bit like the drummer situation in Spinal Tap, we go through bass players like you know say if Neil was out having a curry one night and he cant really stomach curry, it just goes through him and that's like us with bass players. This is a great analogy, eat the curry lovely yum yum and then when it comes out the other end it's not so nice and it burns!

Ringo: The issue is that Hilda, Neil and myself have been doing this band for three years now and we are all massively dedicated to it and you get a new person come in and its sounds really cool at the start but when all the shit bits come in like driving fifty miles to play to ten people, you get really disheartened and your not getting loads of money or things aren't going right and they don't like that bit and they just seem to fuck off! Liam is probably the first person really that we have found that's from the same school and very bizarrely when we found Liam we had just recorded our single and Neil and I met him in the Intrepid Fox (marvellous London pub) and I said here's the deal. We are really sick of bass players who come in and fuck off after six months. If you even want to come for an audition for this band you gotta be down with going through a lot of shit cos it's going to happen. And he was like, ok that's cool, now do you two want a drink?

Hilda: We were like, ok he's got the job!

Ringo: But then he turned up four days later and he'd learnt our set. We said like, fuckin hell this guy's committed!

Q4. Do you think this line up is it now then?

Hilda: Yeah I hope so. At the moment the only link that is kind of tenuous is our guitarist. At the moment we've got Richey Hudson playing guitar and backing vocals for us and he's only semi permanent in the band. And we really want someone full time and unless Kitty Hudson split up (Richey's band!) or we get stella famous it's always gonna be that situation.

Ringo: So if you're reading this and you can play a mean guitar and you can sing then come and visit us at myspace and get in touch.

Hilda: You can't look cooler than me though! That's the deal.

Q5. What are your musical influences?

Hilda: Aw you should see my ipod man, they made me turn it off cos there's such an eclectic mix.

Ringo: Bollocks on it!

Interviewer: Ok then Desert Island Discs, three albums?

Ringo: Oh god three albums?

Hilda: Can we go away and come back with this one?

Ringo: No I reckon I can do that fairly fairly well! I've gotta take The Best of U2 with me, the second one, the silver one with the Bison's head on the front, the later years.

Hilda: I'm taking a Queen album, Queens Greatest Hits. Kleptomania by Mansun, no-one will know what that is so that's why, apart from me and some very cool people.

Ringo: I'm taking Sticky Fingers by the Rolling Stones..

Hilda: Oh you xxxxer! I'm gonna take Life after Death by Iron Maiden

Ringo: Oh good call, good call.

Hilda: What about a tribute album? Randy Roads tribute or something?

Ringo: No I wouldn't take that I don't think…..

Then I think we need some kind of, you see I'd want to take a chilled glam album either best of Motley Crue, cos you can't just pick one Crue album to take on a desert island or kind of a Rob Zombie album, Astro Creep 2000. Something that's a bit rocking, we haven't really got any fighting music on this desert island.

Hilda: We'd just do that naturally, every time I put the Manson album on you'd want to hit me!

Q6. Ok, So first bands that influenced you?

Hilda: For me it was Queen definitely, and Iron Maiden and probably Dave Lee Roth. Those are my three favourite front men of all time. And probably Skid Row, Seb Bach.

Ringo: Back in the day, its weird but the first band I ever saw were Status Quo and I'm not embarrassed about that because you go and see them live and they do what they say on the tin, it's always a good show. Then after that I got into the big fat showy part of rock. Iron Maiden shows were always fuckin huge and Id love to do that, and Motley Crue and bands that have taken it to where it is now. White Zombie are a good example of that, Rob Zombie when he goes out solo and the Backyard Babies. Basically any bands that influence are any bands that go out on stage and look like they want to be on stage and look like Kiss for example rather than looking like Coldplay.

(At this point Ringo has a bit of a rant about Coldplay!)

Q7. What would you be doing if you weren't in a rock band?

Hilda: I've still got a normal job unfortunately, it hard to believe but being in Drugdealer Cheerleader doesn't earn us enough money to live off just yet. Basically we are clever about it and we work really hard. I work for a Pharmaceutical Company but it's a really cool job but boring to everyone else.

Ringo: So if you're my boss and you're reading this then I'm really sick in bed. And I work in TV, not on the front side of the camera but I've got a good voice for radio.

Q8. What's the worst job you have ever done?

Hilda: I used to pack lamb chops in a freezer factory! Let's leave that one.

Ringo: The worst one I've ever had was cleaning out industrial bins, but I also had a great Saturday job working in Ann Summers which was brilliant. The bad thing about it was that at the time we were in a band and we used to do shows on the fetish scene in London so I'd be working till about ten thirty on a Saturday night and then we would be gigging about one in the morning. The guys would come to the shop, take a load of rubber stuff out of the shop, wear it for the gig and then take it back on the Sunday, repackage it up and sell it, so if you bought stuff from me in Ann Summers then sell it on Ebay!

Q9. Do you both work full time?

Ringo: Yeah. I think maybe four or five years ago you could've done it and signed on the dole but I think that if your gonna take it seriously and be in a band then your gears gotta be good. I'm just totally gonna erase Hilda out of this because he's a singer and he doesn't have to buy any gear.

Hilda: It IS important that I get the right equipment!

Ringo: But for the rest of us, drums, guitars and bass, well it's not cheap to buy your gear.

Hilda: There are rehearsal costs as well, people can rehearse in a garage which sounds shit, so you got to have a good rehearsal room and good gear.

Ringo: And we will put two or three nights a week into rehearsals and that's fifteen quid each a time, so forty five quid alone on rehearsing each a week.

Hilda: And then when you're touring around the UK you got to get a hire van to put all your gear in, petrol money. It's a fuckin lot of money! I mean why are we doing this?!

Ringo: We could be rich if we weren't doing this!

Hilda: We've both got degrees as well, and we both took time out of University to do this rocknroll stuff but we fell into that trap of having no money and we couldn't do anything anyway.

Ringo: You can't buy beer if you haven't got any money! But occasionally its nice to come to a gig and people who have been back to see you four or five times you can turn around to them and say 'can I buy you a pint cos you keep coming back to see my band'.

Hilda: You never bought me a pint.

Ringo: Well I fuckin hate you!

Sadly the guys are then dragged off for a pre gig chat or warning to behave themselves if you like, but it has definitely been a pleasure. True rock stars through and through.

Hilda and Ringo: WE LOVE GLITZINE!!!!!

(And hey we love you too!).

Interviewed by Sharron Grainger

Visit the Drugdealer Cheerleader Website