We'll use the one thing we've got more of...

YIKES. Yesterday the NME website ran a story about Jarvis Cocker - it's like 1998 all over again (only they probably didn't have a website in 1998).

The upshot of it is that Pulp could be reforming to play next year's Glastonbury - Jarvis has even gone so far as to say "there'll be a band reunion." Mind you, this quote came from The People, so I'm taking it with a pinch of salt.

I hope it's true though. I hope it's true like I hope I'll live past the age of 40, and like I hope Russell Howard will one day move into the flat next door to me. It must happen. IT WILL HAPPEN.

Pulp were always seen as part of the whole (rubbish word alert) Britpop movement of the mid to late 90s, but I saw them as more of a pop act, with an edge. Yes, they had guitars and whatnot, but that wasn't really their sound as such.

The rest of Britpop was full of your Oasises, your Great-Escape-era Blurs, your Casts, your Dodgys - a wall of guitar noise with a rabble-rousing shout over the top of it all. Brilliant in its way, and God knows those bands gave us some classics (well, Oasis did), but Pulp were... well, a different class (sorry).

Britpop was all about being working class and young, for the most part. It was a reaction to 18 years of Tory government, the workers rising up against their oppression, a design for life and all that. Oasis made the most of the image that British working class people are sweary, ignorant, football-obsessed and violent towards their siblings. Blur went for the cheeky cockney angle, perhaps a bit cleverer (they talked about art every now and then) but mainly up-the-apples-and-pears mindless babble (I'm talking The Great Escape here).

But Pulp weren't afraid to tell the world that, yes, they were working class but they were also the most intelligent band around. Jarvis might not have been talking party politics in every interview, but the way he expressed himself in every lyric was poetic. Every song on Different Class is a melodic masterpiece of well-expressed frustration, sexual confusion, and a desire to break through the confines of their class - not to "make it" or become famous, but simply to get away from the ignorant loons.

Jarvis obviously had issues with feeling he was somehow better than his peers, but his fans could relate to him - he didn't sound cocky or over-confident, just frustrated. "Can't you see a giant walks among you, seeing through your petty lives?" (from I Spy) is the kind of line that, delivered by Jarvis, doesn't make you think "what kind of arse would say that?" - it makes you think "wow, the people he's talking about must be scum."

The sound of Pulp was the sound of a geeky, awkward overgrown teenager trapped in his bedroom, reading poetry and thinking about girls. But it was also the sound of me and my schoolfriends bellowing the lyrics to Mis-Shapes after one too many Lambrinis, and it was the sound of a whole subculture of young people trying to tell the world that we weren't all halfwits.

And, judging by the way young British people are viewed now, and how many of those young people must be screaming out for understanding, we need Jarvis and his band more than ever. Please come back, Pulp - we miss you.