I'm the kid from the cornershop and my life's a riot, says Kaiser Chief's Ricky

But the 29-year-old Kaiser Chiefs singer, stuck in a hotel room in Germany, is having a bad day. It is nothing major, he assures me, just one of those afternoons when the jet-setting rock 'n' roll lifestyle isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Having performed before ecstatic fans in Nuremberg the previous night, Ricky has just spent hours on the phone to Japanese radio and is shortly departing for Paris.

This weekend, the Kaisers play three concerts in California before coming home to headline next week's 02 Wireless Festivals in London and Leeds. And then, the week after that, they head for Glastonbury.

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He's living the jet-setting rock'n'roll lifestyle thanks to a best-selling album, but Kaiser Chiefs' singer Ricky Wilson admits 'being away from home is hard'

"It's ridiculous, when you look at the bigger picture," says Wilson, who was raised in Ilkley, near Leeds.

"I'm doing exactly what I want to do. I'm travelling the world, and everything is going really well for the band. But if you didn't moan about stuff occasionally, you'd go mad.

"Maybe it's my Yorkshire roots coming through. It's the same with the band and our music. We don't set out to write bitter songs, but there's usually an undercurrent of disgruntlement in most of them.

"Being away from home is hard, but it's something we have to do. If I got into a mood and went back to Leeds, I'd soon realise what an idiot I'd been.

"I'd never storm off stage - the gigs are what make all the other stuff bearable."

Wilson is about as far from the stereotypical rock star brat as you can get.

So it's rare to hear him moan about a career he could only have dreamed of five years ago,when he was fronting the Kaisers (then called Parva) while working as a graphics lecturer at Leeds College Of Art And Design.

But maybe his concerns are a symptom of a deeper malaise. When the Kaiser Chiefs (named after a South African football team) burst onto the scene in 2005, they were portrayed as the genial fools in the vanguard of a much-needed Britpop revival.

With their striped blazers, school ties and big, bouncy choruses, they revitalised an indie scene that was taking over the charts - but also taking itself very, very seriously.

With singles like I Predict A Riot, and lyrics about scantily clad ladettes ("if it wasn't for chip fat, they'd be frozen"), the quintet put the fun back into rock and sold three million copies of their brilliant debut album, Employment, into the bargain.

Two years on, as the band try to present a more mature face to the world, Ricky is finding it hard to shake off his old, cheeky-chappy image.

"I don't think we were ever really that cheeky in the first place," he insists.

"That was simply down to the fact that we seemed to be having a better time than everyone else.

"When we made our first album, bands were supposed to look bored and disinterested. We were having a good time.

"But sometimes the silliness overshadowed the music. When we played Glastonbury in 2005, we had been working on our songs for months and we put on a great show.

"Then someone threw an inflatable green dinosaur into the crowd and that's what everyone talks about. Still, I guess it helped to make the afternoon more memorable."

Back in Leeds, as he was writing for the band's second album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob, Ricky had time to reevaluate his role as a 'zany' frontman, as famous for his on-stage high kicks as his songs. He even took on odd jobs for an old friend, Mark, who works in the antiques trade.

"That has been misconstrued," he says.

"I did help Mark, but it wasn't a grand gesture to 'get back to my roots'.

"His shop is at the end of my street. I like hanging out there and I sometimes help him on his delivery runs, but there's nothing more to it than that.

"It can be funny, though. When we walk into someone's house, carrying a sofa, the householders do a complete double take."

For Wilson, the break between albums was also punctuated by a night in a Leeds hospital after he was injured on a pedestrian crossing by a hitandrun driver.

He had been walking home from a Hard-Fi gig in Millennium Square and it was only, he concedes, one of his trademark leaps that prevented him from getting dragged under the wheels.

"That night, it seemed like an epiphany," he says.

"I thought I was going to change my ways and live every day as though it were my last. I could say that the accident has made me appreciate things more.

"And, to an extent, it's true. Except saying that would make me sound like a d***head.

"My leg hurt a lot, but that was it. I am a lot more cautious crossing the road, though."

Many acts have struggled to follow up impressive debuts, but Yours Truly, Angry Mob has taken the Kaiser Chiefs to a new level. The album is still in the Top Ten a good four months after its release and Ruby, the year's third biggest- selling single, has been in the Top 30 for 17 weeks.

But, for all his success, Ricky still seems something of a regular guy in pop star's clothing.

He admits that helping to organise a recent college reunion in Leeds made him realise how much he missed "a bit of normality".

He would also like to see his girlfriend (a production manager based in Brighton) more than "once every couple of months".

For now, however, normality will have to wait.

With the Kaisers' bandwagon gathering pace, the rest of the year is going to be hectic. At least Ricky is facing it with his feet firmly on the ground, for once.

"Some of the bands who emerged alongside us, like Bloc Party and the Arctic Monkeys, are here to stay," he says.

"But a lot of the supposedly cooler groups have faded away. We never wanted to be a fad. We wanted to last.

"But I wouldn't want success to go to my head. It's easy for pop stars to get spoilt by their nice hotels and the fans chanting their names.

"I see it in myself sometimes, and I don't like it."

• Kaiser Chiefs headline the 02 Wireless Festival at Harewood House, Leeds, on June 16 and Hyde Park, London, on June 17 (www.wirelessfestival. co.uk). They play Glastonbury on June 24.