At the far end of the L-shaped dressing room at the Aéronef venue in Lille, Katie White’s crimping tongs won’t reach more than 3ft from the plug. Which means that, where we’re sitting, we can hear the Ting Tings’ singer but we can’t see her. None of which prevents her from bellowing at the Ting Tings’ male half, Jules De Martino. “Tell him about Michael Palin!” she shouts.

So he does. Six months ago, having just released their maiden chart-topper That’s Not My Name, White and De Martino performed the song on Later . . . Signing in beforehand in the BBC reception area, De Martino noticed that also waiting to be collected was Palin, his hero. “I ran up to him and just shouted, ‘Michael!’ At which point he grabbed his bag, thinking we were his chaperones. It was only when I started gabbling on about Python and travel programmes that the penny dropped.

“He had to think of something to say, so he goes, ‘Well, keep on watchin’ ’em — they get better.’ ”

What comes through here is the polite if frantic back-pedalling of a cornered celebrity. But De Martino’s having none of that. “No! It was great!” he insists. “He was really charming!”

Which pretty much tells you not only something about what sort of a year the Ting Tings are having — the simultaneous No 1 single and album in the UK, the increasing Stateside ubiquity and let’s not forget the iPod ad personally sanctioned by Steve Jobs, the head of Apple — but also the air of amused curiosity with which they are negotiating it.

Tour dates are being added on an ad hoc basis, as and when demand for their shouty digitised DIY pop dictates; the “deluxe” version of their debut album We Started Nothing, out this week, contains DVD content and acoustic rerecordings, but no new material. Perhaps they’re saving that for the tricky second album?

Finally peering out into view, White explains, “We haven’t got any songs for a second album. I mean, when we’ve been sound checking, one of us might come up with something catchy, but we’ve not been recording any of it.”

If truth be told, they’re not sure that’s wise. But then, the Ting Tings are a band with a pathological aversion to plans. They have discussed the possibility of not making a second album — although, right now, White thinks that she and De Martino should learn new instruments for a future project. “That’s when you’re at your most creative,” she says. “When you have to work with what you’ve got.”

The two have more reason than most to believe in serendipity. Two years ago they had all but given up on making music together after their old band Dear Eskiimo were dropped by Mercury before they even got around to making an album. On hearing the news, De Martino, 34, gave up playing music and installed himself in the Islington Mill — a studio-cum-arts complex in Manchester — with a view to focusing his talents on production.

While at the Mill, he subsidised his overheads by hosting parties. Here White, 24, picked up De Martino’s beloved 1978 Stratocaster and bawled the first thing that came to mind, while De Martino swapped his guitar for drums. Increasingly, people started coming just to hear the noise that she and De Martino made. Initially the name they gave to their club nights, Ting Tings also became their calling card.

Sometimes your perception of events is influenced by the point at which you enter the story. I spent the first few months of the Ting Tings’ success harbouring a nagging suspicion about their motives. The impassive older male at the back; the surly blonde frontwoman a relentless ticker tape surge of attitude. The Transvision Vamp throwback in the video to That’s Not My Name was barely recognisable as Dear Eskiimo, whom I had seen propping up the bill in a Camden pub.

“You saw us?” White exclaims. “You’re the first journalist we’ve met who ever saw Dear Eskiimo. What did you think?”

I tell her that she was nothing like the way she is now on stage; that she stood still, demurely singing pop tunes that, while pleasant, lacked conviction or raison d’être. “It was pretty s***,” White concurs. “Our manager brought an agent to check us out. And he said that she had her fingers in her ears the whole time.”

Anyone who also saw the Ting Tings in their previous persona might have also grabbed the wrong end of the timeline when seeking to understand what they became. While others were hailing the genius of That’s Not My Name, I couldn't help wondering if it amounted to one last craven attempt at stardom. The irony is, of course, that they had already done that. This time, they were just being themselves — and that’s why it worked.

Indeed, it was only when White joined the artistic community at the Mill that her inhibitions fell away. Visiting bands such as Ariel Pink and the Gossip clearly made their mark on the ideas that became That’s Not My Name — a song inspired by the salacious marketing ideas suggested by staff at her old label — and Fruit Machine. As De Martino puts it, “She used to be in the Take That fan club. Fundamentally her sensibilities are pop, but she embraced other ideas — whereas I’ve travelled in the other direction.

“What I’ve realised,” he adds, “is that if a song isn’t coming together after two hours in the studio, it was probably s***."

The only exception to the band’s no-planning rule, it seems, is the families they are keen to see after a year of touring. The concern De Martino’s parents felt this time last year at his lack of a “proper” job has now turned to incredulity that his schedule keeps him from seeing them at all. Three weeks off at Christmas will help.

Until then, however, the novelty doesn’t seem close to wearing off. De Martino points his camera at the brutalist walkways that extend around L’Aeronefand and adds more pictures to the 2008 photojournal he began “when things got crazy”.

Will he publish it one day? “God no,” he splutters. “Who would be interested? See, the reason I flipped when I saw Michael Palin is that I always loved the idea of doing what he did, with the travel and everything. One day we could do a tour that retraces one of his journeys, perhaps Pole to Pole — although we’ll maybe draw the line at, y’know, Chernobyl.”

The deluxe edition of We Started Nothing is released on Nov 24 2008 by BMG

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