I never wanted to be in a boy band because of the stigma and people's cynical views on it"

Blimey. This is the last thing I would have expected from Ben Adama, 18-year-old singer and songwriter with, er, boy band a1. For a group that has had a slew of top ten hits, a million selling debut LP and a recent number one with a cover of A-Ha's Take On Me, this virtually amounts to fighting talk.

"I think there are far too many people out there who think they can put together just any old people and make some money out of it, but that wasn't what a1 was about.

"It took three years to put together because they wanted people with musical integrity. I'd started a band with Mark before this, but we were denied the chance to write or contribute.

"We left it straight away!"

This is all rather refreshing. a1 are of course perceived as the latest in a long line of modern all-boy bands that started with Take That and has continued with Boyzone and Westlife.

But, during the course of an interview to promote next Thursday's gig at Bournemouth International Centre, Ben displays something that appears all too rarely in this kind of band: A mind of his own.

The boy band tag, for instance, is clearly one he feels unsettled by.

"One of the the most important things to us, and what's set us apart from so-called 'boy bands', is that we write.

"We have a musical background - I was head chorister of St Margarets at Westminster Abbey, and I sang for the Pope and The Queen.

"I've already recorded two classical albums so I've had a lot of experience of singing; I played classical piano for ten years"

It's odd then that it was a cover version that actually took the band to number one.

"Ben admits, however, that there a secret agenda behind releasing their version.

"We were a bit fed up of a lot of older people ignoring us, not noticing that we do play instruments and write songs. Take On Me got a lot of notice because all these ex-Aha fans kept giving us the thumbs up. Even A-Ha did, actually."

Their new album however is a mostly self-penned affair.

"Indeed the band is already writing material for other acts - hardly the mark of record company stooges.

As for the tour, he's disparaging of the usual boy-band-with-dancers shows.

"We went to see a lot of pop concert this year but we found that most acts brought on dancers and did a showcase of songs. By the middle we were getting a bit bored so we decided to go for a completely live band, adapt our songs to be played live, and play a few of the instruments ourselves.

"One song we do is called Take The Tears - and that's me singing, playing the piano and that's it.

Ben seems just cheerfully disregarding of the usual conventions of boy band fame. Whether it's the video for latest single ("we don't have to walk round grinning and pretending to be happy all the time. We'd had enough of that!") or playing live ( "When we have to do TV and occasionally mime it's a bit boring"), they're gently chipping away at the cliches of their peers - and will probably outlive them.