BBC NEWS TALKS TO SUGGS

On the new album....

"While we wanted to get back to that classic pop/reggae Madness sound, we also wanted to create a more complex record for people of our age.... we started it last year and we are driving our managers to distraction. It's about half done. We booked five nights at the Hackney Empire in June to give us a deadline for launching it. But it's already looking like we are going to have to shift those dates. Hopefully, really hopefully, September. Maybe Christmas."

About Sway and Sorry...

"I first heard him through my daughters and I liked his stuff. We heard he liked Madness because the first flat he moved into someone had left a Madness album in a cupboard and
it was the only music he had for a while. We are careful of trying to combine styles of music but we tried this and it was perfect."

About ageing Madness...

"I feel that I am part of the first generation which didn't want to let go of being young.
It used to be pipe and slippers on the dot of 35 but that boundary is increasingly blurred.
At the same time as I would like Madness to have the same energy we had as kids, it would be undignified not to realise it has to change slightly and that has been going alright. I take a lot of inspiration from the film Buena Vista Social Club, that's how to grow old gracefully as a musician!

Remembering appearing on The Young Ones...

It was a great time. We knew Ade Edmonson and Rik Mayall and those comedians and we would go and see each other perform. Then we were offered this TV series where Margaret Thatcher went back to Mars and we were elected to government. But the BBC decided it was too expensive. Then bits of that show turned up in this new comedy The Young Ones, so we went on. It had the same sense of fun we did, very spontaneous. You could veer off the script. One time we said 'Why don't we have a fight with police and smash up a few cars?' and they went 'great idea!'.

On appearing on Strictly Come Dancing...

"We get offered all sorts of things and the great thing about being in a band is that only about four of you have to turn up to make it happen and the rest can be padded out with blokes in sunglasses. Enough agreed to do Strictly to make it worthwhile. You can't argue with the bald facts, it's one of the most watched programmes on TV. Having done a bit of media, my attitude is a bit more laissez-faire. Some of the others think rock and roll should be more, well, rock and roll."