Joe was gay; that is a possibility Eric and Arthur, almost certainly reflecting the standards of rural little Newent in the 1940s and 1950s, are unable to entertain.
He was 'an indoor boy' they explain, and Arthur insists he had girlfriends and his arrest for importuning was a terrible shock.
Eric goes further in clips from the new documentary, Something I've Got To Tell You: A Life In The Death Of Joe Meek, saying "He was a weirdo to us, he was doing something we didn't understand."
But there is no feeling they felt anything other than love for him and sadness for the end he came to, there's a shake of the head when they say that London is another world - one where there brother was free to live his 'other' life, which he kept assiduously hidden from his family.
"He was a sick man for the last six months," Arthur sadly recalls, "He should have come home and had a rest."
I remember the Meek brothers. Arthur lived a couple of hundred yards from my childhood home and I can recall him promenading slowly around our block in a decidedly retro and definitely flash car which I think I convinced myself was a Cadillac.
A parade of greyhounds up the street was another Meek signifier. Eric, who died recently, was a successful greyhound trainer whose funeral was a national event for enthusiasts of that sport. It was a skill he has passed on to his son Rob; a genuinely lovely bloke who couldn't do too much for you, and a fine footballer, too.
Poor old Joe never adapted to the 1960s beat revolution - stomping number 1, "Have I The Right" by The Honeycombs was a glorious exception - and, as a result remains a cult and a curiosity.
Historian can now extended the 19th Century to 1914, and as Philip Larkin said, the 1960s didn't really begin until 1963, leaving Joe and his carefully groomed crooners and instrumental groups marooned as far as the cultural commentaries and historians are concerned.
'Modern' music was Beatle-born and while you can still hear the sound of the Fabs on the radio today, listening to Meek sounds like a trip to another planet.
Article comments
1 - JC Mosquito
Meek was an unknown pioneer of r'n'roll - perhaps the movie will change that.
2 - Colin Ricketts
I must apologise. Daily Show satirist Jon Stewart will NOT appear in the Meek movie, it's an actor of the same name and I repeated the error from the IMDB.