To the naked eye, Baden-Powell and Michaela Strachan enthusiasts Scouting for Girls couldn’t be more clean living.

Trained in good citizenship, campfire safety and all things preparational, and armed with a stout, unapologetic helping of Beeb-approved ‘coming of age’ nostalgia-pop - and a record deal with Epic - the trio of childhood friends are currently on their biggest headline UK tour to date.

Full of beans, they combine the right amounts of naivety and idealism (some might say artificiality/annoyance but at least they’re not decked out in neon) like a bunch of lovely musical spaniels, all eager and jumpy.

There’s the one playing the hapless indie boy card: “What the hell is a new rave/indie/electro goth? That sounds terrifying. I wouldn’t like to meet one of them down a dark alley,” in the form of singer Roy Stride; the slightly more masculine but still largely unthreatening
‘short-back-and-sides’ drummer Pete Ellard; and the somewhat mental-haired, bespectacled science geek Greg Churchouse on bass.

But on further inspection their infectious, top ten charting tunes and apparent ‘innocence’ may be an elaborate – or unelaborate given the internet grooming connotations surrounding their name - ruse to facilitate more traditional, illicit rock ’n’ roll gains. “You don’t join a band if you don’t like a party” asserts Stride.

Dear me, imagine if their favoured tour bus reading The Handbook of Champion Knot Tying and Treasure Hunting was really concealing a copy of Chicks With Dicks Weekly.
With songs about Elvis and girls you can’t get/didn’t keep hold of, and all things wistful and teenaged - poignancy plus chirp sans any eyeliner bullshit equals Scouting For Girls. “It’s the sound of love in an elevator”. (I reckon Steven Tyler would beg to differ Roy).

Optimistic, inspirational and (occasionally) slightly similar sounding tracks coupled with OCD-style repetitive lyrics make more like the soundtrack to One Tree Hill than that of a group of potential predatory fiends. Even if they were, perchance, written whilst crying over Strachan (but c’mon who didn’t love The Really Wild Show?).

“Writing fun, catchy, happy party music is one of the hardest things a songwriter can do. My aim with Scouting For Girls was to bring together a selection of unpretentious, great songs and give people a great time.”

Well, at least they don’t have a skag habit. Rest assured, then, parents of ‘wolfcubs’ (fully fledged and pledged SFG fanclub members) these boys are harmless enough. Two of the three - Stride and Ellard - actually met as six-year-old cub scouts; you don’t get much more wholesome than that.

Although Akelas all over the land would do well to remember that overly regimented childhoods can breed manipulative control freaks, if not psychopaths.

Stride has wasted no time carrying his responsibilities as sixer on to the band dynamic as frontman and leader. “I’ve been telling [Pete] what to do almost as long as his mother! Greg and I met at school and have been playing music together since we were 12. Britpop exploded and we started going to gigs [Stride and Churchouse went to their first Suede gig together]. I became hooked on great bands like Blur, Pulp, Oasis, Supergrass, who put on great shows with great songs in the best tradition of British pop music.”

Writing buoyant and affirmative-in-the-face-of-adversity songs about the good old days is justified when Stride admits to being ‘brainwashed’ as a child by relentless exposure to sixties compilations in his dad’s car.

“I love great pop music, I was nurtured on some of the best pop music ever produced. I want to write the perfect pop song, not because I want a hit record or a gold disc, but because that’s the music I truly enjoy and love.”

Contagious as a bout of chlamydia at Frog (R.I.P) it’s already pretty impossible to avoid getting their piano-pop stuck in your head all week long. “We don’t take ourselves seriously, nobody should take themselves too seriously. There’s a real emergence of great UK bands at the moment in a similar tradition such as the Holloways, Wombats, Pigeon Detectives, writing great songs and having the time of their lives.”

In true Blue Peter media training style he is quick to add “We take what we do very seriously... If someone is paying to see you play or buying your album I think it’s an insult if you don’t give 100 per cent – It’s such a privilege to do this for a living. A year ago I was working in a shop!”

But SFG didn’t just set up a MySpace page and turn up on Radio One claiming an unforeseen and rampant fan phenomenon. Oh no, according to Stride it’s been a right old struggle. “We’re a ten year overnight success! We were all stone broke as we all put our hearts and money into whatever band we were in and worked part time to pay the bills.”

After years of crappy gigs in awful venues with even worse sound systems, under various musical guises the three boys formed SFG in 2005. “When we started SFG we decided to do things differently. We put on our own club nights and worked on building up a fanbase - we were selling out gigs before we had a record deal. Now our shows are like a big party and I can guarantee you a good time every night and I’m proud of that.”

Stride wrote their debut album’s opening song ‘Keep on Walking’ after getting back from Glasto where they performed as an unsigned band in 2005. By the time they returned this year, to play the Late ‘n’ Live stage, they’d enjoyed a dizzying couple of months following their signing a deal in February.

“Everybody at school wanted to be in a band... Most grew out of it and got a proper job... We never did. Now we are just riding the coaster and enjoying every minute. When it stops we’ll just run round and queue up for another go...” Incessant to the end.

Scouting For Girls play Koko on 4 December 2007.