You had a bit of a dark night of the sould around the time of your number one single, didn't you?

I went AWOL. I went to the seaside. I wanted to enjoy being number one. I didn't want to be forced into enjoying it. I didn't want fucking record company people I didn't know slapping me on the back, I got freaked out a bit and contrary. Contrariness is one of biggest sins. Like if you told me that bottle of Beer was Grolsch, I'd say, "No, that can't be Grolsch, it's too old." I'm terribly guilty of perversity, I know as an adult, I should be enjoying myself now, but I just seem to be getting.........angrier.

Do you worry that you get aggressive when you're drunk?

It's just frustration. I don't like being on the road. There's no emotional stability. People look after you but only to make sure you're fit and well enough to do that extra little bit that they want to squeeze out of you. I'm not a punchy bloke. I just get upset, it's pressure, I guess. This year's been pretty heavy with touring and my personal living conditions have gone a bit downhill and neglected, which makes me get down.

Are you comfortable with your new-found wealth?

I've been thinking about this a lot. It's quite a relief to have some money at last. But sometimes I get really ashamed and really surprised by the money I've made. Before we went out on stage at Budokan, Alex, being Alex, said, "Do you know how much you're going to be earning in the next two hours?" And I just didn't want to know. I still don't know how much it was. It would have frightened me. I'm fairly innocent when it comes to business. Maybe that's a weakness. It's funny when I go back to Colchester and go to the pub, it's all, "Oh, drinks on you, is it Graham?" and when people use to say that 18 months ago, they could not understand that I was seriously overdrawn. It was that wierd situation where you'd be going on an executive flight to Europe to do a promotion and then going home and making dog-end rollies and cadging drinks in Camden. Nothing to eat. Now I look at my bank balance and go, "Fucking hell! what do I do with that?"

Your guitar playing technique isquite extraodinary when you witness it close up.

What all the chords running into each other and that? Yeah, I like to be fluid. Then I like to stop and go against everything. Like on "Boys and Girls". Alex is trying to take it to some Superstition Funkytown and I'm trying to fuck it up by slashing these big discordant things across it. Makes it more interesting.

Do you like the screaming girl element of your audience?

It's romantic isn't it? I naivly thought when I joined this band, that we'd stay on a sort of Dinosour Jr level. I didn't think this would ever happen to us. But the pain in the arse is that Damon writes really good songs. I don't know whether the very young fans actually think about the subjects like corruption and transvestism that the lyrics look at, but they certainly know all the words.

What would split Blur up?

Death. Or if we made another Parklife. And I don't think we could carry on if one of us left............Unless it was Alex.