BBC Southampton's Indy Almroth-Wright caught up with Portsmouth-based Beta Band member Richard Greentree to find out more...

Where are you at the moment?
I'm at home in Portsmouth, I'm trying to fix some decking but I'm battling against the odds. I'm having one of those comedy days where everything that can go wrong has gone wrong so I'm not having a fun day!

I decided to start early at about 8 o' clock, but the soil pipe on the side of the house which connects up with the toilet decided to explode all over the side of the house, all over the alleyway, all over my windsurfing equipment. So I spent the first hour and a half of my day clearing that up and fixing the pipe back on the way and it's kind of gone on like that today!

It must have been a tough decision to decide to hang up your spacesuits how did it all come about?
Well, we were in France doing a radio show and Steve said that he had something he wanted to talk to us about in this tone of voice that he has sometimes. I knew straight away what it was going to be because we'd all been feeling it for a while and not saying anything.

It's just down to the fact that we seem to have been on a plateau for so long and we weren't moving either up or down, we were just gliding along on this cloud of critical acclaim with no commercial success.

Stephen Mason

So, we decided that we'd do just as much good to end the band than to carry on doing it - because no-one seemed to be taking any notice of what we were doing. That coupled with the fact that we just weren't earning any money doing it - we were in debt to the record company and were just living on handouts. There was just no security, we're all getting older and want houses and families - you can't be doing that when you're not sure when you're going to be getting paid next so we had to call it a day.

Does it feel like breaking up with someone?
Yeah but it's breaking up with three people - I'm really feeling it at the moment because we had a little bit of a mourning period and then I sobered up and got on with my life. I've moved back to Portsmouth and got back into my sport [windsurfing] and I've started working again and spending loads of time with my family it's great.

But now I've got to think about it all again because we're going back on tour and it all feels a bit weird. I think it'll be great at the end of the tour because it will feel like a proper ending - but at the moment the idea of it does feel a bit daunting to be getting back out on stage, playing the songs again and answering the same "why are you splitting up?" questions every night.

Have you started the preparations for the farewell tour?
Well we've booked the rehearsal space, but this time we're not going for any visuals, any lights or any costumes. It'll be a totally stripped down simple versions with just a bare number of instruments and we'll just be letting it all hang out!

Rich in action

The main reason for that is that it just costs so much more money, we have to have an extra member of crew for all the crazy little instruments, an extra person for the visuals and in the end you end up with 14 people on the bus and that's 14 hotel bills and 14 wage bills. We've never made any money out of a single tour - so this time we're going to strip it all back and live on baked beans and sleep on park benches to hopefully get enough money to buy some Christmas presents!

What's the best or most bizarre memory you have of being in the band?
I dunno which one to tell you really! There was a time when we were in a hotel in Manchester and we got a bit merry on the rider after the show - around one or two in the morning we decided that we wanted to go for a swim and found out that the pool was all locked up.

So as a protest we took the mattress out of the room we were in, picked the lock on the door and threw it in the swimming pool, but then we went back upstairs and thought better of it - so we went back down and dragged it out and put it in a different room and put the dry mattress in our room.

John Maclean

Then we rang room service and bribed him to sell us the video tapes of us doing it with the intention of using it as a backdrop (which he did for £50), but then we lost the tapes, but it was a great night. There's a picture of us at the hotel on the dustsheet of the first album.

What are you doing for work now?
I'm a carpenter, so I'm doing that for now because I don't want to do any music until The Beta Band tour's over. So I'm doing this to pay the mortgage. Then, when I come back from the tour I'm going to set all my equipment up somewhere, get a studio running and start working on an album which will hopefully be ready for the summer next year.

What's the best thing about Portsmouth?
The windsurfing without a doubt! When I moved to Edinburgh I was under the impression that it was on the sea - but then I got there and it was just a muddy estuary so my plans to windsurf were scuppered there! We had the windiest summer on record this year in Portsmouth so I've had a great time. It's good to be back with my family and all my original mates after being away for so long.

Did you know that Robin calls you The Ginger Prince?
Does he! That's one of his many names no doubt! There's a long standing tradition in the band of giving each other as many nicknames as possible. John's the one with the most - you could almost never call him by the same name! Sometimes he thinks they're offensive towards him but they're not - it's more of an endearing thing. I think Boney Seagull is our biggest favoured name for him. He thinks it's because he looks like a boney seagull but it's actually to do with something he has in common with a Jamaican rapper!