... And they're TOFF! Kula Shaker, The Divine Comedy, Victoria Spice Girl ... 1997 is the official Year of the Pop Toff. And what with kenickie, Symposium and all manner of other underage scamps running riot all over the place, it's also the official Year of the Pop Tot. So what could possibly be more Zeitgeist-friendly than a band who combine the two and throw in the most irresistible pop-punk tunes this side of Ash? Nothing, that's what! So kindly show your appreciation for SNUG - quite posh, very young and the best thing to come out of Bracknell, Berks, since ... well, ever, basically. Forming two years ago at (public) school may have cost Snug a lucrative future as captains of industry, judges and what have you, but the rock 'n' roll career of James Deane (guitar, vocals), Johnny Lewsley (drums), and the two bassists Ed Groves and Ed 'Randy' Harcourt, has progressed so fast you'd swear the old boys network is also running the music business. After all, this is a band who won a Battle Of The Bands contest with their very first performance, secured a slot on Fierce Panda's ultra-hip teen-scene 'Screecher Comforts' EP with their gig count barely in double figures and signed to the might of Warner Brothers before most of the band had started shaving. Hanging about, it would seem, does not loom large on the Snug agenda. "Yeah," laughs James, 17, steadfastly refusing to break the law by supping Coke in a Blackfriars boozer. "We've gone from the hippest-but-smallest label in the country to the biggest-but-least-hip one in record time. But we figured, well, we love our music and we want everyone else to love it too, so let's go for the corporatist of the corporate and see what happens." Fortunately, what's happened is Snug's debut single proper: an utterly endearing playground-punk singalong called 'My Girl (Keith)', so full-to-bursting-point with head-spinning melody and youthful exuberance it makes Bis look like Ocean Colour Scene. It's also the chirpiest song you'll hear all year. Overall, this is a band unlikely to fit snugly (ha!) into the new wave of new grave. "Yeah, I'm not into all this 'wear eyeliner and look miserable' business," says James, cheerily. "Bands like that are just boring. I don't mind if their songs are like that - lots of our songs are pretty serious - but you don't want to see someone moping about onstage." This, then, is the new anti-new grave, the - if you will - new cheerfulness. Accordingly, Snug gigs are ludicrously boisterous affairs, equalled in sheer enjoyment terms only by fellow teen scene-sters, kenickie and Symposium. "Oh, Symposium are much more punk than us," grins James. "They always smash venues up, whereas we like to repair things onstage." Evidently a band your mother could love. Certainly the band's own mothers do: far from worrying about wasting an expensive public school education, Snug were actively encouraged towards rock stardom (Ed's mum even used to drive them to early shows in the family Volvo) and their parents are regularily spotted in the moshpit at gigs. Which is, perhaps, why Snug don't take drugs, beg your correspondent not to reveal the identity of the sole band smoker and have yet to enjoy any 'hot' groupie 'action'. "We do get lots of lovely girls at our gigs," says James. "But the only ones who come backstage are freaks." "There was this one Spanish girl who seemed quite nice," sighs Randy (nicknamed thus because it "makes my life easier", fabrication fans). "She talked to me for ages and wrote this big message in Spanish on my shirt. But when I got it translated it just said, 'Pity you're a wanker'." An action unlikely to be repeated as these four clean-cut young fellas continue their meteoric rise to stardom. Their latest ambition is to play Wembley stadium, omething they should achieve by, ohh, a week on Tuesday if things keep moving at the current rate. The question is: are Snug too posh to handle it? "Of course we can handle it," asserts James. "You're never too posh to rock." Mark Sutherland