"Secretly I'd like everyone to think I'm really hard," says Chris T-T.

The cult singer-songwriter has been posing for photos flanked by two enormous Rottweilers and saying he'll "come and find" us if we print his real surname. But those familiar with his four albums of witty, urban Brit-rock are likely to see through the charade. After all, this is the songwriter who can find glow worms of romance in the dark shadow of a highrise and write extremely moving songs about giraffes.

But Chris is probably wise to be working on his self-defence. Last year, he released a single entitled Eminem Is Gay, news of which seems finally to have reached America.

"Somehow, 18 months after its release, loads of people in the States have started to hear it," says Chris.

"My manager gets a constant stream of emails from 14-year-old girls in the Mid-West saying: 'How dare you call Eminem gay! U R gay!' No sense of irony whatsoever," he chuckles.

From the belief systems of British giraffes to a spiked cup of BBC tea, his latest album, 2003's London Is Sinking, is shot through with humour. It's very whimsical, very English, yet somehow manages to avoid the smug tweeness of Belle And Sebastian.

"It's the twisted advantage of being overweight," Chris laughs. "If I was a foot taller and quite beautiful, I wouldn't be able to get away with it. But nobody who sees me could possibly believe I would be feeling superior."

Like Martin Amis with a heart, Chris's work to date has all centered around our capital city: 2001's The 253 (a Sunday Times Top Five Record Of The Year) paid homage to a London bus route, while London Is Sinking reveals, through his flat estuary vowels, an almost Dickensian obsession with the Thames. But, for the last year, Chris and his fiancee have been living in Brighton.

So far his "Brighton works" include a song about the pier fires and another about homing pigeons. "The racing pigeon community is up in arms because Brighton keeps stealing its pigeons," Chris explains, deadpan.

"These mobile phone aerials screw up pigeons' homing systems so you get a lot of extremely expensive, highly-experienced birds that fly in from the North, hit Brighton and get lost."

Sadly, however, these will not appear on the next album, scheduled for May.

"I think the next album will be a London album in which London is completely destroyed," he explains, "with the last song set on the final train out - a few half-dead refugees travelling to the safe haven of Sussex.

"Then that's closure and I can get on and do my chill-out acid funk album about St Bartholemew's church."

7.30pm, Tickets £7.50, Tel: 01273 647100