A FORMER Southampton schoolboy and his award-winning band are the latest musicians to be namechecked by David Cameron.

The Prime Minister’s aides have confirmed that he is a fan of the indie band, whose lead singer Joe Newman is from Highfield.

He claims to have known about them even before they exploded on to the music scene after winning the Mercury Music Prize last year.

It is not yet known if the band welcome their Number 10 fan base as they are currently touring in Canada and the US but a spokeswomen seemed amused at the thought of the Prime Minister “rocking out to Alt-J”.

This is a much more positive response than the usual from musicians who find themselves a favourite of Mr Cameron.

Morrissey and Johnny Marr reportedly banned David Cameron from listening to The Smiths, after the Prime Minister said that he loved their song This Charming Man.

Lead guitarist Mr Marr was horrified and immediately took to Twitter saying: “Stop saying that you like The Smiths, no you don’t. I forbid you to like it”.

The news of Mr Cameron’s favour for Alt-J came after one of the group’s tracks appeared on a playlist created as a present for G8 leaders at the Lough Erne summit in Northern Ireland, in June.

Although Mr Cameron did not himself choose the tracks, which were presented to world leaders on a USB stick, the Prime Minister’s aides revealed that he was a fan and had been for some time.

It was his wife Samantha who introduced him to the band, who have also won a Ivor Novello Award for their debut album, An Awesome Wave, and often listens to them on his iPad while travelling.

The track chosen for the G8 playlist was Tessellate, which features the line “Till morning comes, let’s tessellate”.

Former Cantell School pupil, Joe, met his bandmates in 2007 while at Leeds University, and they named themselves Alt-J after the command used on a Mac keyboard to create the Greek letter Delta.

They spent the next five years working on their sound and their debut album, and their hard work has spectacularly paid off in a year which has seen them go from unknowns to critical and commercial success.

An Awesome Wave was released in May last year, and peaked at number 13 in the UK album charts.