Once you get a couple of battered sausages and chips down her she's great," says Tom Findlay, referring to ex-Sugababe and latest Groove Armada collaborator Mutya Buena.

"She was great and totally into it," Tom goes on, slouching in a west London cafe dressed casual but smart in jeans and his favourite white shirt ("It makes me look a bit like a waiter, but I love it").

"I was a bit daunted about Mutya to start with. But my other half's worked with her and said she was really nice."

The joint effort was released as Song 4 Mutya from album Soundboy Rock. As far as Mutya herself was concerned, it was the song's electro/80s feel that appealed the most - apart from the chance to work with Tom and Groove Armada team-mate Andy Cato.

"I'm a real 80s baby," she says. "And it's so different-sounding to what's going on today. When Groove Armada do their set, mine is the only fully electro track they've got. It's easily the most 'different' track on my album."

And Song 4 Mutya remains a live hit at festivals - particularly those rare occasions where Buena has joined the duo. Even if, according to Tom, "the band have quite a few problems concentrating when she comes out in her shorts!"

Apart from great taste in music and a shared liking for deep-fried food, Tom and Andy got on with Mutya because of a shared outlook. Ask Mutya what it's like sharing the stage and backstage with Groove Armada and you get a cheeky chuckle. "Oh, they're naughty!" she says.

"When we did our tour in Australia, the promoter said that we made Motorhead look like a geography field trip," laughs Andy, the taller half of Groove Armada.

"The bus driver, a Yorkshire lad, said he's 'Not seen 'owt like that for 20-year. And that were Motley Cru'!"

Not what you might expect from one of the most respected teams in music today, with anything they do regularly snared to be used in adverts: the M&S "This is not just food..." music is theirs, as is the "I see you baby, shaking that ass..." tune for Renault. So do they consider themselves a dance music band?

"In the studio, we're a technology-based two-piece. How we do it live is quite rock 'n' roll."

But when they say they're a "technology-based two piece", it's actually more like "two technology-based one-pieces who come together later in the day" - as Andy's relocated to Barcelona.

It's good that they managed to save a friendship that has lasted since their now wives, at school together at the time, first introduced them.

"My wife was like,'Oh, come and meet this mate because he's got a lot of records.' That word was the buzzword for me."

"And I was lying on a beanbag when he walked in," laughs Tom, looking at 6'8" Andy as he tries to arrange his legs somehow, "and I thought I was hallucinating."

The outfit was named after a disco night called Captain Sensual at the Helm of the Groove Armada, run by a mutual friend in Sheffield, and brought together Tom's "guilty pleasures" disco, and the house music Andy had been drinking up in Stoke.

Now with their stock as high as it could possibly be, their Greatest Hits already out of the way and having worked with everyone from Neneh Cherry through Sunshine Anderson and Angie Stone to Candi Staton and Mutya, it would be tempting, to sit back. But, then, that's just not the Groove Armada way.

"If you're going to do it," says Tom, "You might as well really go for it."

Groove Armada headline Wakestock tomorrow. They will also be playing at The Lovebox Weekender on July 19-20 in Victoria Park, London. See www.lovebox.net