The great thing about Scissor Sisters, according to singer Ana Matronic, is that they speak to the weirdo in everybody. She tells Tony Clayton-Lea how the band's blend of pop candy, hen night shenanigans and bend-over-darling campness has gripped the pop world.

SHE says she has the foul mouth of a stereotypically foul-mouthed sailor, but really, The Ticket finds Ana Matronic (aka Ana Lynch) rather sweet, genuinely friendly and game for a laugh. She starts proceedings by telling the background to her surname.

"Ah, the illustrious and famous Lynch clan from County Cork! As my dad would tell it, his great-grandmother and great-grandfather came over to America. She ran off with a gambler and he knifed a guy in a bar fight after being called a Mick. He was then sent to Sing Sing and then deported back to Ireland as an undesirable alien. How's that for a true story, huh? The Lynches are much better behaved these days, however."

Ana might be, it is true, but her pals in the band once known as Dead Lesbian and the Fibrillating Scissor Sisters are naughty little scamps. Ana first met Scissor Sisters flibbertigibbet lead singer Jake Shears (real name Jason Sellards) in 2000 at a New York transvestite club. On what one can only assume was a themed event (please God, let's hope it was) her first sight of Shears was in his art-shock performance of a late-term back alley abortion, wherein Shears jumped out of a black plastic bag that held fake blood. His onstage sidekick was dressed as a human-sized morning after pill. From such bewildering moments did the rise and rise of Scissor Sisters begin.

Not that Ana Lynch (as she was known then) realised where such a meeting and melding of minds might end up. As a former anthropology major, she could easily have taken a more academic route. Does she ever wonder what might have happened if she hadn't left the rather less fake-blood environs of academia?

"It's quite possible that I would have become a lecturer," she says through a something of a racking cough. "I mean, teaching is very similar to performing, isn't it? You get up in front of a classroom and you talk and you have to hold their interest and attention - if that isn't similar to performing then I don't know what is. I definitely think I would have gone more the college professor route than the high school or lower grade areas. But yes, if I had stayed in academia I really think I would have become a teacher."

Academia's loss is definitely pop music's gain. According to Ana, she was an anthropology major who loved to perform. "After a while I quit school and decided to pursue performance, and for the kind of performance I wanted to do, I didn't think it could be taught. It was definitely more the type of thing that needed to be experienced and lived - as they say in the music biz, getting my chops."

Not that she has abandoned her academic training: "I am currently observing celebrity culture in its native habitat and I will be documenting it in my upcoming book, Origin of the Sub-species."

While we're on the topic, who is the nicest celeb she has met so far? "So far I haven't met anyone who has been an asshole. Elton John is a surprisingly nice guy. For all the grandiosity that seems to come with him, he's an incredibly down-to-earth person and a really lovely man. Debbie Harry is also really nice, very sweet, I like her very much. She's quite shy, though. It's interesting, because some performers are so confident onstage it borders on the insane, but meet them privately and they're quite reserved.

"However, I've been disappointed with some very limp handshakes, which is something I can't stand - my Irish dad taught me how to grip a hand. He would tell people off if they gave him one, and I'm getting to the point where I'll say it as well."

Limp handshakes aside, the meteoric rise of Scissor Sisters has been one of the shock pop music surprises of the past five years. In plain back-and-white terms, it shouldn't have worked: a debut album made on a shoestring budget by a motley collection of people is all very well and good, but when your first single, Laura, flops (it gained ground when it was re-released) and is followed by a virtually unrecognisable version of a Pink Floyd song (Comfortably Numb) you either haven't got a clue what you're doing or you're doing something intrinsically right that is nonetheless loaded with the distinct possibility of failure.

Yet the Scissor Sisters shtick stuck like glue; the self-titled 2004 debut has shifted over 2.5 million copies in the UK alone. The band's blend of pop candy, hen night shenanigans and bend-over-darling campness gripped strands of the zeitgeist and refuses to let go. The new album, the rather bland Ta-Dah, continues with the mix and looks set to emulate if not exceed the success of the debut. But the question has to be asked: are Scissor Sisters art performance opportunists who just got lucky?

"You can never predict what is going to catch fire in the public imagination," states Ana matter-of-factly. "Our record company certainly didn't think that we would do what we did with the first album. And neither did we. I'm still surprised, often, that we made it out of New York City. Are we opportunists? Perhaps, but we've worked hard at this, absolutely. We wouldn't have gotten to number one if we hadn't toured and toured, and engaged in a great deal of hard work. Jake and Babydaddy (Scott Hoffman, guitarist) are workaholics as far as the studio work is concerned. So no, our success didn't come very easily at all. If you look at Scissor Sisters on paper, of course it shouldn't have worked at all - I mean, you have three out-of-the-closet gay men and a rather voluptuous and, by Hollywood standards, fat girl who has the mouth of a sailor on her. So Scissor Sisters shouldn't have worked, we should not have been a pop phenomenon, but the fact that it is indicates a lot of hard work in the studio and on the touring front. I rest my case."

The great thing about Scissor Sisters, according to Ana, is that they speak to the weirdo in everybody. That's important for her to maintain, she says. "I don't believe there's any such thing as an ordinary person. Everybody has a kink and that shouldn't be locked away, it should be brought out and celebrated. I think that as a society we get hung up on the normal way of being and people that live their lives outside the norm and buck traditions on all fronts - like I do - get persecuted in certain ways. Ultimately, we should see ourselves not as one body but as an amalgamation of individuals."

There speaketh the anthropologist. And what, pray, is Ana Matronic's kink? "Oh, honey," comes the reply in a voice dripping with distilled essence of Mae West, "that would take another, far longer interview."

Ta-Dah is on release through Universal/Polydor. Scissor Sisters play Dublin's Point on November 9