Great. It surprised us. We've been doing a lot of these types of gigs in different parts of the world. We just did one in a place called the Café de Monte Cristo in a city called Santa De Mingo in the Dominican Republic and we just went in and had fun. The music isn't too loud - it doesn't blow your head off! The idea is the audience feel like they can relax into it rather than you blasting it away and it worked really well. Everyone was happy and dancing and having a good time, which is ultimately what INXS has always been about. We're not trying to save the world, we just like playing music!

Well, INXS have been pretty fortunate because we've played pretty much every size of gig that you can imagine. From 1983, where we played to a quarter of a million people at a festival in California, here in Wembley stadium to 80,000 people, Texas stadium where we had 70,000 through all the pub gigs we did in the early days together as a band. I guess this is another soiree into yet another area that we really haven't explored that much; just playing versions of our songs stripped right back and to pull the volume down in the room and let the audience feel that they could be in a coffee lounge with us - and it really works. Last night's show surprised us. When we got there we realised there were 1,500 people - that's not a small gig! But then I thought, well is it? Maybe we're in a city the size of London and that's our idea of a café show. It went off - full of Australians and New Zealanders so it was quite raucous. But most of the people at the front of the queue were British. I wanted to know who was actually going to be there. After Michael's death I think we were trying to find out who are INXS's fans - what we've lost and what we've gained.

When we first came to the UK when magazines like Melody Maker still existed, well, they're gone and we're still here. But when those magazines were around, they were like: "Gosh, they're crap. They're just Australians." We took all that on board and took it on the chin but thought: "We're going to come back again." The interesting thing was that we were no one's media darlings, we never were those kind of people. Finally, when we went to America, it was only Americans who fully embraced our career, took the thing on board and turned INXS into an international showbiz thing. For a long time we didn't want to come back because if people keep telling you they don't like you then you go away. So we went away, but when we came back in the late '80s we found that our fanbase had grown. That was really exciting. Funny how you have to go about it here! To give a more human touch, is that the Farriss brothers, our dad was originally from London so we always felt that we had family here, that there are good people here and we get on well with them. We made friends here and I lived here with my wife for five years and two of my kids were born here. I really have a lot of good memories of this place.

I'm probably the wrong one to ask because I'm probably the least social of any of the guys in the band. The funny thing is that the bands haven't seen a lot of each other. I have bumped into Clem and Deborah a little bit. They're good people. They've been doing this a long time so respect to them because it's hard to do this for year, yet alone years. I like their music, always have. Deborah, as Deborah Harry, supported us once in Wembley Stadium so there's always that connection but it's not so much about old yarns around the fireside, it's just a respect thing.

I suppose the Sranglers were around the same era as Blondie and I remember they made a video about Atomic bombs and people jumping around like kangaroos with hats with corks on. I think the idea of being an Australian has changed so much, especially over here. In Britain you've had an onslaught of Home and Away and Neighbours and you've had the stars from Neighbours who then become music stars and it's all very cerebral and intellectual with actors like Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe, Kate Blanchett... It's not Rolf Harris! To me, being an Australian growing up in Australia when we used to think of ourselves as poorer cousins of the great whatever in the north, the more I see going on now, we were one of the first wave of Aussies to leave Oz and venture out into the great big world. What I see now is a very different world. I liked the naivety of the early part of it all - culturally. I think as far as INXS goes, we really surprised lots of people by simply hanging in there.

The early years were pretty funny. They were crazy. The little gig we did last night, playing in the pub, we did that for a good three or four years, constantly. We cut our teeth in those environments. You don't lose that very easily. You'd think it would wear off but it doesn't really.

I get favourite tours. I'm quite enjoying this one actually. There's something about this tour. A lot of good things have been happening. On the Oi awards that we did in Mexico city - it's their equivalent of the Grammys - there were 20 million people watching on television and 12,000 people sitting there. Bon Jovi was on the show as well. As we were about to go on my brother Jon got food poisoning and he couldn't play. He was vomiting on the side of the stage and we thought we'll give him some medicine and we kept thinking , what are we going to do because it's live television and we can't come back tomorrow. Eventually, one of the guys in our road crew said: "I'll do it." He went off to get a hat, but then we couldn't find any drumsticks. So I'm panicking cos it's ten seconds till the curtain lifts and the band are yelling at each other...Next minute the drum guys comes back, I jump on the keyboards and about ten seconds later the curtain goes up - and no one knows any different! We started off the tour in New York and did a gig for the Australian Consulate in New York who were putting a benefit for the victims of the Bali bomb. And that was a great show in the Hammerstein Balroom, Russell Crowe and a few other people came down...

After Michael died we didn't know quite what we were for a while because for so much of our career he was the spokesman, his personality, so much was him. And I'm assuming the public got used to his personality, his incredible talent, and we did too. It was really tough when he was no longer there. We had to look at ourselves and say, what are we? Are we the help or are we INXS or who are we? I think it's good that we didn't rush back into until we'd talked about it a lot and thought about it a lot. It wasn't until a friend of ours, Jimmy Barnes - who plays in a band called Cold Chisel - said to us: "Why don't you play?" So they had a big stadium show to celebrate a big Australian record company and we got up and played with Jimmy and that was OK. Then we got asked by the Australian Government to open the Sydney Stadium which had just been built for the forthcoming Olympics in 2000. There's a bit of a short list in Australia for bands who can open stadiums, you know! So they said: "Will you guys do it?" And we thought we'll need to get a new frontman because Jimmy does his own thing. We thought about it, approached Terrence Trent D'erby and he said he'd love to do it so he came out from Los Angeles.

I just miss my friend, you know. I think that a lot of the peripheral interest in it has disappeared and you're left with the reality that you lost a good mate. And, in showbiz terms, a real talent and a great singer and he and I wrote hundreds of songs together so I really miss that too. But, after the thing with Terrence, a couple of the guys in the group, Jon [Farriss] and Kirk [Pengilly], knew Jon Stevens and we just thought maybe we can do a pub gig and it went great. Poor Jon; he was given two days to learn 25 songs and he just came on the stage and did it. I just thought, that's impressive. We've been building up our level of work again in dribs and drabs. We didn't rush out two weeks after Michael died thinking, off we go...

The future is a new record and we're all writing and working towards that. The working title is 'The Green Thing'. I don't really know where or when it's going to happen, we're trying to figure it out at the moment. The good thing is that the material is beginning to form. We do a bigger tour in America in the summer as well...

I'd probably say, for sweeping under the carpet, we made three albums with Chris Thomas as a producer which were our biggest catalogue albums. Then we decided, as a lot of bands do, that we were invincible and didn't need any help. That following album did really well in Europe but didn't do so well elsewhere, although it did do well here. Though in terms of success in the United States it didn't do that well. That's what I'd get rid of, that point in our career. Most positive achievements would have to be, well, just some of the shows we've done. Off one album, five top 40 hits and four top five hits in the US isn't bad..!