Wednesday, March 14   10:00 p.m.
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�Yeah, people think Wimbledon is just where the tennis happens,� says Jamie T, denizen of that South-West London suburb, and maker of the first classic British pop album of 2007.

He continues: �And that�s exactly what it is, to some extent. It�s a very leafy, nice place, but as with everywhere that has a High Street, on a Friday and Saturday night it�s disgusting. It�s like, �Just what the are you doing? If your mother saw you on the floor like that, with one stilletto heel off�� Then for the rest of the week, it�s nice and quiet again.�

Anyone who�s been following the progress of this young B-boy-cum-troubadour will instantly recognise such falling-over-drunk messiness as an omnipresent feature in his four amazing singles thus far. Think of �Sheila�, whose main character �goes out with her mate Stella/It gets poured all over her fella�, or the cheeky chorus of �If You Got The Money�, whereby our hero plots to thieve another guy�s girlfriend, using his money to take her out on the razzle.

Aged just 20, Jamie�s debut album is a mad scramble of sonic diary entries about his recent experiences, and those of his mates, in Wimbledon � and probably a few fantasies besides.

Called �Panic Prevention� - after the series of mixtapes and club nights he has put on � it�s a record which depicts a blurry, boozy, chaotic world that�s instantly recognisable as the same one reported about in concerned TV news features from Britain�s teen-alcoholic-strewn small towns. And quite unapologetically, the young Mr T is much closer to the reportees than the reporters.

�I love all that,� he adds. �I love going out on a Saturday and behaving like a prat. But at the same time, me and my mates are always like, No, we�re not doing Wetherspoons. You have to draw the line. Sometimes I�d rather just sit in a car park and drink a few cans and talk shit. And you know you�re having a bad night when you end up at Po Na Na�s. Something must�ve gone seriously wrong. Actually, I went to Wetherspoons yesterday��

Talking to Jamie, you realise that there�s very little artifice in his music. He really is the guy in his songs, casting an only semi-detached eye over all the snogging, brawling and technicolour yawning of a weekend � in fact, he�s usually participating. What separates him from the crowd is that that, like other young observers of our time such as Mike Skinner, Alex Turner and Lily Allen, he turns his experiences into fantastic tunes, whose, lurching, genre-barrier-defying logic brilliantly mirrors the lifestyle he portrays.

He first joined a punk band in his early teens, playing the bass. Secretly, he was writing his own songs, and soon stumped up the courage to turn up to open-mic nights at local pubs. Since he�d learnt to play on a bass, he got himself an acoustic bass, because he couldn�t get his head around the full six strings.

Parallel to this, and as a rather separate enterprise in his own head, he used some money left to him by a deceased relative to buy an Apple computer and some basic Logic music-making software, and started tinkering around building tracks in his bedroom at his Mum and Dad�s house. Often, he�d get back in the wee hours from a night out, set up a makeshift beat, plug in his acoustic bass and rant about the carnage he�d just left behind in Wimbledon High Street. A fair amount of �Panic Prevention� started life this way.

The sounds that came out of his private little world drew on everything he�d listened to growing up. Some of his earliest musical memories are of drum �n� bass hammering out through his brother�s bedroom wall. He also loved punk rock � The Clash, Billy Bragg (an electric troubadour) and West Coast ska-punkers, Rancid � and by extension got into vintage dub and reggae. Like everyone, he tuned into Britpop, but around that time discovered �Check Yo� Head�, by the Beastie Boys, and then tracked back to �License To Ill� and �Paul�s Boutique�.

�They killed me,� he says, �the way these kids were there, not giving shit about anything, doing crazy stuff. They just used loads of 808 beats � the simplicity but pure genius of it. They were just throwing shit down, you know?�

Music became Jamie�s own private medication for a bout of crippling panic attacks which afflicted him a year or two ago (he freely admits that his lifestyle was spiralling out of control). He found that he could put on a record, and his anxiety would magically fade away. In his bedroom, Jamie sucked up all the music and ideas, and spewed them back out in his own peculiarly regurgitated form. He makes no bones about his thefts.

�I like talking about bands and music I�m into,� Jamie says, with a candour rare in a musician of any age, �and how I�ve taken music I�m into and done my own thing on it. Every song I write is all about some other song. If you listen to other things and use them, it�s much easier, someone else has done half the work for you. I suppose it�s quite juvenile in a way � just, like, throwing things together � but ignorance is bliss, to just mix styles of music, and not give a shit if it doesn�t sound authentic. �He can�t do that, it�s awful!� whatever!� Who wants to get old anyway? I�d rather be young and silly.�

�Salvador�, the loping romantic fantasy which originally appeared as Jamie�s first single for Virgin, was his effort to write a song like �Cool For Cats� by Squeeze, he says, crossed with some of the vibe of Them�s �Baby, Please Don�t Go�. It would be hard, though, for either party to pin a lawsuit on him for stealing their ideas � it sounds nothing like either.

The final track, �Alicia Quays�, was so named because, again, Jamie was trying to copy the piano part from one of R&B diva Alicia Keyes�s big hits as the basis for a track.

�It was all minor chords, and a bit sorrowful,� he remembers, �Then I ended up dumping the piano part and writing a whole new song within that project in Logic.

�Then I got pissed and freestyled over it for about 15 minutes, and we just cut it down to 5 minutes, taking the best verses. But I still called it �Alicia Quays�, because I name all my songs after the thing I got them from, because then it�s easier for me to remember them.�

One of Jamie�s favorite words is �mix-mash�. He�s a big fan of making mix tapes, and listeners will notice that the album tracks are interwoven with snippets of dialogue, which aim to bring a little of a mix tape�s no-respite energy to proceedings. For him, �mix-mash� defines the music itself, and also his lyrics, which are very much of a hip hopper�s �freestyle� logic. Few of his songs are about any one person or subject, but a collage of people and events, real and/or imagined. Let Jamie talk you through �Pacemaker�:

�It�s just everything that goes on really. I tried to cram everything into one song. That includes going to PoNaNa in Wimbledon, and realising it�s not as big as it looks, because of all the mirrors. Going to your GP. Friends egging you on to fight someone. People coming back from Iraq is in there as well. Girls always wanting to know where you are�(raising his voice) d�you know what I mean? ' I�ll be back in half an hour!� Juveniles hiding their porno mags. Mothers smoking too many cigarettes. The 12 Bar is in there��

Jamie�s career started to take off early in 2006 after he started a residency at the 12 Bar, a folkie club in Central London, which, on his irregular Sunday nights, would be so overrun that several hundred people were locked out. Zane Lowe, the Radio One DJ, tagged �Back In The Game� (from his �Selfish Sons� single�) as the �Hottest Record In The World�.

The latter stages of his album were completed in a studio in Elephant & Castle, alongside Ben Bones, who drums in his new live band, the Pacemakers.With his album in the can, things are now moving fast and furious for the lad. He�s started getting props from heroes like Paul Simonon from The Clash (when he supported Simmo�s new band with Damon Albarn, The Good, The Bad & The Queen), and also Billy Bragg, whose key tune, �A New England�, Jamie has covered.

In the manner of a true rap star, though, he intends to �keep it real�, and stay in tune with his family and friends. Not for nothing did the sleeve of �If You Got The Money� (his first Top 20 single) feature a photo of him with his Mum, Dad and elder brother, posed in their front room. Although he�s now moved into a flat with big bro, he�s a homeboy at heart. The dialogue between tracks is mostly just him arsing about with his pals, who bequeathed him with his artist name, not as some kind of MC tag, but to differentiate him from another of their gang, known as Jamie D.

Inspired by his childhood heroes Rancid, Jamie aims to keep all aspects of what he does close to home. �I�m aware of how important it is to do things your own way,� he says, deadly serious for once. �Then if it backfires, you can only blame yourself. But I always wanted to just make this album for the moment, and nothing more.�

Already, it seems that Jamie has captured the moment for 2007.