Manic Street Preachers are refusing to react to news of a song called "Richey's Dead" by an unsigned Cheltenham band.

The Manics' office issued a strict "No comment" when the Maker rang for a response.

Ideal, the band responsible for the track which so far only exists as a demo, have this week told us that their lyrics have been misinterpreted. The song, they say, describes an incident involving a girl obsessed with missing Manic Richey Edwards, whose car was found abandoned near the Severn Bridge.

Will Hutchinson, Ideal's vocalist, guitarist and lyricist, said the band had been playing the song live for ages without incident. Then last Tuesday, (April 15), a freelance journalist phoned him at 8am, asked a few questions and promptly sold the story to the Press Association. It was all over the national papers the next day.

Hutchinson said: "The song is a true story about a girl who's obsessive about Richey and won't accept he might be dead. We were at a party, really drunk, about a month after he went, and I was having a conversation with this girl. I said, 'Sod off, he's dead', like a drunk joke.

"Then she went out with this bloke who looked really normal and suddenly started to look like Richey Manic. He's our keyboard player now, and she's still going out with him. She doesn't like the song. She's still a huge Richey fan, and she still doesn't think he's dead.

"I don't necessarily think he is. I'm not a particularly huge fan of the Manics, but I don't hate them."

Asked if the single was in bad taste, Hutchinson said: "Nicky Wire going onstage with a dress on is bad taste. Wearing balaclavas on 'Top Of The Pops' is bad taste. And what about the line Richey wrote in 'Motown Junk' - 'I laughed when Lennon was shot'?

"It only becomes bad taste when people get really serious about it. There are actually only two dodgy lines in our whole song. One is 'Richey's been released/You gotta let him rest in peace/Richey's not so manic now, is he?'"

The other is: "You've got to know by now he's thrown himself over."

Ideal have been together for three years playing "Seventies and sometimes Eighties meets Nineties rock 'n' roll, Subway Army meets Sweet with a bit of Velvet Underground thrown in."

Undeterred by the hostility which has greeted their newfound notoriety, Hutchinson said: "We're coming to get you, ready or not. We're at the Bull & Gate on election night, May 1, as an alternative to Billy Bragg."