HOW DID YOU COME UP THE IDEA FOR THE T-SHIRT?
“Well, it was a very different creature when it started. The back print was the same, but the front print had a picture of my then-girlfriend on it, in all black metal make-up, and it was all black and white. They were printed up for Emperor’s first tour, that we did with them in Britain in 1993. We were sitting on our label owner’s lawn, coming up with ideas for lots of different things, and I believe our bass player came up with this quote, ‘No, no, no, he’s not, Jesus is a cunt!’ We were laughing about it so much. We were like, ‘Shall we dare put that on?’ so we did.”
WHERE DID THE ‘VESTAL MASTURBATION’ BIT COME INTO IT?
“The artwork was by the artist who did our artwork at the time, Nigel Wingrove. He’d done the cover for [1994 debut album] The Principle Of Evil Made Flesh and some other designs, and he said, ‘Look, we’ve got this great design for you that’ll really work’; we kind of incorporated it into it. The ‘vestal masturbation’ line was all me. It tied in nicely with the nun on the front, and inferred with the back print that Jesus was very personal to the religious sect!”