John Newman: I want to fight Jake Bugg... at table tennis

John Newman has warned fellow Brit award nominee Jake Bugg he wants to ‘smash his arse’… at ping-pong.

The Love Me Again singer’s challenge is of a somewhat tamer nature than Robbie Williams’s famous invitation to Liam Gallagher at the Brits in 2000 to step into the ring.

But the 23-year-old insisted: ‘I’ve heard Jake’s really good at table tennis and I want to play him. I don’t want to smack him or fight him. I’d just quite like to play against him. I can hold my own. I could smash his arse around the table!’

Bugg, 19, is the only rival for the best British male Brit that Newman could imagine confronting, the sensitive songwriter admitted. ‘I wouldn’t want to take on James Blake. He is a quiet guy,’ he mused. ‘Or Tom Odell – I love Tom Odell, he’s lovely.

‘And David Bowie! Imagine punching Bowie? It would be the most surreal moment of your life and the biggest regret ever.’ The Yorkshire lad also thinks Bugg would be a worthy winner of the British male gong.

‘Jake hasn’t been credited for the brilliant work he has done yet,’ he said – noting that Odell claimed last year’s Brits critics’ choice award and Blake won the Mercury Music Prize.

‘It is a tough category. I just see it as I am new blood and I feel fortunate to be nominated,’ he added.

Newman is also up for honours in the British single of the year and British video categories – both for Love Me Again. And he said fans may not have to wait too long to hear more of his top-class tunes.

‘I don’t like to stop song-writing or expressing myself and being creative – that’s why I do what I do,’ he said.

‘I don’t understand how people say “I’m writing a new album” – because surely you should write all the time?

‘That way, you’ll have more practice, and can make an album with better material.’

[Originally published Metro, Guilty Pleasures, Wednesday 19 February 2014]