EXCLUSIVE: When music artist Antony Szmierek released his 2025 album Service Station at the End of the Universe – it’s great by the way – we had to ask him the big questions
Services stations and airports, no institution welcomes all walks of life quite like them. Where else will you regret bumping into a coach-load of football fans relieving themselves of a four-pack they’d drunk by 11am on a Saturday? Or watching wedding guests anxiously dig into their McDonald’s breakfast in the hope their finery avoids dripping ketchup.
Britain’s brightly lit roadside shelters do not discriminate for if we need overpriced fuel, food, flowers or the loo they will be there in our hour of need. But, and this is a big but, not all are made equal as motorists are at their route’s mercy when it comes to lucking out with the facilities available to them.
Sadly few people share such appreciation for service stations, so when we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with a bona fide hero of the genre, musician Antony Szmierek, we had to pick his brains.
Szmierek, 34, dropped his album Service Station at the End of the Universe last week and it is insanely good. Honest and heartfelt British story-telling you really want to dance to. If you came here for more Antony Szmierek music chat, please hang fire, there will be plenty of that coming to the Daily Star but right now it’s all about his The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy-inspired cover art.
Antony said: “The one on the album cover is Forton Services, which is outside Lancaster Services. And now, obviously, I get super excited when I see the big concrete UFO, but that’s the one I always wanted to stop at because I was a bit obsessed with what it looked like and how weird it was.
“And I got to go up there and I managed to persuade a cleaner to let me in on one of the times I went up and it’s full of asbestos and dead Christmas trees and stuff. But it’s so Forton.
“I like the really grubby ones like Keele Services which is on the way back up north to Manchester, which is just a s*** one with the Greggs and stuff, but they’re the ones I like.”
Not holding back, Antony saved us the job of asking what service stations haven’t impressed him so much.
He continued: “I’ll tell the ones I don’t like, and I’ve said this a few times now. Tebay and Glouester services and everyone says that Tebay and Glouester are the ones to be at and they’re farm shops, mate.
“That’s not a service station and I’ll have none of it. I’ll die on this hill. We skip Gloucester and Tebay is kind of unskippable because you’re just on the outskirts of Scotland, but we skip it actively and we’ll go for a Greggs or a Chopstix. Chopstix bangs on the road. So that I need a Greggs and a Chopsticks I think.
“Everyone enjoys a service station, right? Because everyone’s in the car and sick of it and everyone wants a coffee and a p*ss.”
A great thing about a service station is you never know who might might bump into in the queue for a coffee or sarnie. Antony who started his career as a teacher, revealed who he’d most like to run into at a Moto Motorway Services Greggs – and just as importantly what he’s ordering.
He answered: “It depends what time of the day. Sometimes they’re going for those weird pizzas that they have in Greggs. They’re like slabs. You could build a house out of them. I quite like them. I had a big Belgian bun phase and no one ever has Belgian buns, but then I started realising I was eating four cakes a day and started to trim down on that a little bit.
“I think for me probably like Jarvis Cocker I feel would be great to sort of see if he was still wearing a flamboyant suit or if he was in tracksuit when he’s in a service station. Or like Bob Mortimer or someone funny and kind of unexpected. Someone that you feel like the service station could have conjured up the spirit of the service station. I think that those two are probably there. Yeah, I think they’re definitely service station-men.”
The wordsmith kicked off his UK tour in Leeds on Friday night, with tickets for remaining shows available via his site.