The British tabloid press might not admit it, but there's more to Chumbawamba than simply a contretemps with the loftier echelons of the Labour Government.
After 16 years of trying, the anarchist musicians' collective hadn't amounted to much: a string of provocative albums and a few run-ins with anything that resembled authority.
Then came an enormous, smash-hit single and suddenly Chumbawamba were exactly what they had always protested they didn't want to be: stars. Feted on American TV chat shows, signed by a major record label, Chumbawamba seemed to be playing the corporate game after years of sneering from the sidelines.
But there was a solution: enter John Prescott, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister and number two in Tony's Blair's bright new order . . . and one well-aimed bucket of water.
Mr Prescott's drenching came at the Brit Awards, the annual, self-congratulatory record-industry bash, in London in February. Percussionist and vocalist Dunstan maintains that no publicity stunt was planned and that the drenching was a spontaneous attack on 'new Labour, old inequalities'.
'We went to the Brits with our hands behind our backs,' said Dunstan. 'We'd heard Tony Blair was originally going to be there, but that he'd been warned off because he thought we might do something.