"I can't act so it's just as well they had a puppet to do it," says Jarvis Cocker of his proper film debut, in Wes Anderson's adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr Fox. "The puppet gives a much less wooden performance than I would."

Fantastic Mr Fox. "The puppet gives a much less wooden performance than I would."

Cocker voices Petey, one of the few human characters, his role the result of meeting director Anderson when DJing with Pulp bassist Steve Mackey in Paris at the wrap party for Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette. "When he'd written the script, he'd also written the words for this song and he asked if I'd do the music for it. Which was quite nice for me 'cause usually when I get asked to do things it's the other way round - they want me to do the words." Cocker discounts his previous film appearance, as part of band the Wyrd Sisters in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, as "more like prancing around on stage".

Early versions of Fantastic Mr Fox cast him as an onscreen narrator but US test audiences were baffled. "I may turn up as a DVD extra in the future," he opines.