LADY GAGA’S kooky new video for Telephone places her firmly in the overblown school of pop stars – 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 therein 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, who are performing at Liverpool University later this month, 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.

“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.

“Eventually, four days later, I got a call saying that he didn’t think there were any singles on there.”

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. “A great song is where everything works together. On the first album, I just thought it was about being catchy.”

“When people listen to your music, they have to be able to connect with it and feel what you’re singing about,” he continues. “And that's why people like us, because we’re normal blokes who sing about things everyone can understand.”

SCOUTING for Girls play Liverpool University on April 29.