A pint with...

JOE ventures into the world of John and Edward Grimes to chat about being evil, escaping the madness and sexually transmitted diseases

By Nick Bradshaw

You may not have come across Lucan twins John and Edward Grimes. They left our shores last year to enter a talent competition that was televised on British TV for the latter part of 2010 and which goes by the name of the X Factor.

They caught the eye of everyone's favourite Irishman, Louis Walsh (OK, Louis Walsh's favourite Irishman, Louis Walsh), who was a judge on the competition.

They crashed out of the televised talent fest, but Louis stuck with them. It didn't matter to him that their singing and dancing wasn't up to the same standard as other acts from his stable such as, say, Six or The Carter Twins. He saw something special...

Something that could make Louis a lot of money.

Well the lads have come home to launch their first album, Planet Jedward, and blow me, it turns out that they've managed to get onto the radar of some of the most astute, opinion formers out there - seven to ten-year-old girls.

Not wanting to miss out on what may turn out to be "The Next Big Thing"and wanting to get in on the act before they become known in the mainstream media simply by a moniker that fuses them as one single unit, such as Jedward (a combination of the lads' first names, John and Edward... clever, eh?) and end up doing naff Abrakebabra ads, we thought we'd better muscle in and check the "singing" twins out.

It turns out that neither John nor Edward drink alcohol and are not a frequenter of pubs, so we abandoned the idea of having a pint with them (we'd have made them share it, and they'd have probably spilt it everywhere anyway) and arranged to meet them in their office.

It turns out they haven't got an office (a playpen somewhere, maybe, but not an office) so we arranged to meet them in the office of someone at their record company. We're guessing from the worried looks of their handlers, after they noticed Edward using the computer and orange segments trodden into the carpet, nobody had told the person whose office they were at risk of wrecking that they'd be playing host to our little chat.

Best we get on with things before someone comes in and kicks us out...

JOE: Hello John. Hello Edward.

Edward (to himself, but loudly, while tapping away on the computer on the other side of the room): OMG! Jonathan Ross has, like, put up something about us on Twitter saying “I’d send my Jedward army into space and then there’d be an actual Planet Jedward, not just an album with the name Planet...”

John: JOE's waiting, Edward!

Edward: Sorry JOE... and then Jonathan Ross says "I am splicing your DNA with some grass seeds so that there’ll an army of Jedwards."

John: Come and sit here and talk to JOE! JOE's waiting.

(Edward, who has an injured leg after falling on stage, limps over and joins us.)

JOE: Right lads, what's it like to be back on home turf?

John (Ignoring question): I think I've seen your website. It's really cool.

JOE: Thank you

Edward: It's going to be really big.

JOE: Thank you. Back to my first question, you're home - what's that like?

Edward: Do you Twitter? What's your Twitter?

JOE: We do and our name on there is ManStuffJOE.

Edward: How many followers?

JOE: Not as many as you.

Edward: We're Planet Jedward. I like checking out what's being written about us on the internet. I'll be checking out what you wrote about us on JOE.ie.

John: Let JOE ask his questions, Edward!

JOE: Thank you John. So what's it like to be back home?

Edward: It's actually crazy being back home. You think it's crazy in the UK but EVERYONE here knows us - little kids, grannies, ...

John: We've had, like, hundreds of girls following us around Dundrum Town Centre and around Dublin Zoo. But we haven't actually managed to get back to our actual home this time.

Edward: It's cool being back here because we know the place, we know how to escape everything without getting lost. If we needed to escape a situation we'd be able to run away.

JOE: So do you get more freedom when you're here, more time on your own?

John: No, not really. There's too much for us to do. We had to get these new blinds on our house, because people are always outside our house going crazy. We can't really hide anywhere. It's strange going home because everything's changed for us over this last year, but being home is always the same. But that's good.