You launched the album on the HMS Ark Royal didn’t you? Do you boys fancy yourselves as being Navy lads at all?
  Rick: I don’t know about that. It’s just funny how oak trees grow out of small acorns. I sort of went down to the ship with my son for a day out and got talking to the crew and we just said wouldn’t be great to do a gig on the flight deck and they said, well it would be possible so we put all the powers that be into action and there it was and what a fantastic way it was to launch an album.

Do you still get the lovely ladies following you on tour?
Rick: We take them with us. There’s a lot of lovely ladies that follow us on tour and it’s great looking at them. It really is.
Francis: It’s fascinating for us because really over the last four or five years the audience is really 50/50 both male and female whereas years ago it was pretty much 70-80% male headbangers. But the audience has really widened, anything from 8 to 80 and there’s a lot of very nice looking young fillies.

Who is the most interesting person you’ve ever met in your entire life.
Francis: I suppose Prince Charlie because we grew up with Prince Charles, we were in that era that he grew up. When I first met him I though wow this man has been really programmed and conditioned to be a king. But it’s the education and that. While we were out having a laugh he was actually learning how to command a ship or learning how to fly a plane so I found that quite … the person himself standing there.

Rick: I can’t think of anybody. I mean, you meet so many interesting people in this business, not necessarily in this business but generally through life that and right at this present moment no one actually sticks out.