Alex Kapranos talks about his chef days on Bath Street that led to the formation of Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand started as an imaginary band in the kitchen of Groucho St Jude’s on Bath Street. The “discreetly cool” bar, restaurant hotel opened in 1999, an outpost of the London members club, the Groucho Club. Glasgow businessman Paul Wingate, an information technology consultant, and Bobby Paterson, who played and toured with 1980s band Love and Money, bought out the 50% stake owned by the Groucho in 2002.

Back in the heady days of the year 2000 it was a stylish hangout for Glasgow’s glitterati. Behind the scenes, Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy were working in the kitchen. They had the idea of forming a band to play at their friends’ parties. “Alex showed me how to play a song he had written called This Fire, which only had two chords, and then we met Nick and Paul,” Hardy recently recalled in an interview with The Times. “Our first gig was in a friends’ bedroom in 2002. Before I knew it we were recording our first album in Sweden.”

While sitting in Paris restaurant Le Pantruche, a favourite of Alex Kapranos since he made the city his most regular home two or three years ago, following his marriage to French singer-songwriter Clara Luciani, the Franz Ferdinand frontman recalled his chef past on Bath Street.

“At Saint Judes, we used to do this thing called an inside-out chocolate pudding,” he says. “When it was perfectly executed, you had this wonderful light crust a bit like a cannoli. And then you would just tap it gently, and the whole thing would collapse in on itself and this gooey, delicious chocolate would ooze out. But to get it right was literally a margin of about 10 seconds of cooking. And if you f***** it up, that meant you had to start again. We didn’t even try souffles – but when they do them perfectly each time here, I’m still just awestruck.”

Kapranos and eventual Franz Ferdinand bass player Bob Hardy, who worked shifts alongside him in the kitchen at Groucho Saint Jude’s, would talk about their plans for the band as a conceptual art project – Hardy was studying at the Glasgow School of Art: “The songs simply come from me and Bob talking about the things on our minds. That is how we started: as an imaginary band. Most bands are made up of people who want to play guitar and be good musicians, but we had no desire for craft for craft’s sake.”

In an earlier interview, near the start of the band’s assault on the charts, Alex said: “Bob had never played an instrument in his life at that point. He was still at art school and doing the dishes in the evenings. I was doing the starters and the desserts.

“While the last couple in the restaurant were having their romantic night and were taking their time over whether to have the chocolate pudding or the cheese plate or petit fours, me and Bob would sit there in the kitchen, glum as anything, wishing they would hurry up and order.

“But during those times we would sit and play each other music and talk about what it would be like if we got this hypothetical band together and things we would write about. I think Bob thought it would never happen and was a fantasy world.”

Franz Ferdinand released their new studio album, The Human Fear, last month. Produced with Mark Ralph, who previously worked with them on their 2013 album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, the album showcases Franz at their most immediate, upbeat and life-affirming.

Talking about the album, Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand said:"Making this record was one of the most life-affirming experiences I’ve had, but it’s called The Human Fear. Fear reminds you that you're alive. I think we all are addicted in some way to the buzz it can give us. How we respond to it shows how we are human. So here’s a bunch of songs searching for the thrill of being human via fears. Not that you’d necessarily notice on first listen."