2012

CARL (speaking in 2012): The Liberty of Norton Folgate really sparked the fire for us to do another album. It was a really enjoyable experience and sort of repositioned us in the eyes of journalists and fans. And it seemed to reignite a certain enthusiasm among us all too.

CHRIS (speaking in 2012): Once you get us all in the same room for a certain amount of time, it’s like chimpanzees writing Shakespeare; you’ll come out of it with some good stuff eventually. You just think, ‘Oh yes, I’ve got a few songs.’ And then someone like Mike will go, ‘I’ve got this riff,’ and suddenly it’ll be really good.

LEE (speaking in 2012): Mike and Carl have written the majority of the songs so far, but even Woody is getting in there and has written some good stuff. The songwriting has changed quite a bit and everyone’s doing their own thing.

WOODY (speaking in 2012): I’d always struggled with lyrics, but Carl and Lee were very nice, got excited by my music, and put lyrics over it. Then as the years went by I thought, ‘I need to step up my game. Why am I relying on other people? I should give it a go myself.’ I struggled a bit but now I’ve started writing full songs.

CHRIS (speaking in 2012): We don’t see a lot of each other, but thanks to modern technology, we all do music on computers and send each other MP3s and what not. Except Suggs – he’s old school. For example, we were rehearsing and he came in with a bloody cassette because it was a song he’d written ages ago and he had a really good version of it.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): Some songs do sort of float in the firmament until they’re ready, like this one that I wrote about three years ago. Another thing is, we’re now writing the words from the perspective of being old men – although we try and keep the music as lively as it was when we were younger.

WOODY (speaking in 2012): I think we’ve become more refined and a little grander. There are more brass and string parts and I think we have a richer and more complex sound. In the early days it was quite basic, which was good, but we’ve developed things a bit.

CARL (Speaking in 2012): There’s something in the code of the samurai that says it take a man 40 years to master his art. I’m up to 35 years now and I feel like I’m at my best as a songwriter. I know I’m not the best songwriter, or the best singer of all time, but at my own level, I’m approaching my maximum.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): The thing is, if you’re going to put a new song between Our House and It Must Be Love, it has to be pretty good, so that’s the sort of level we’ve set for ourselves now – to survive with the old classics. We don’t always succeed but we try hard. And you can’t really tell until you’ve played them a few times and got the audience reaction.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): I do enjoy the gigs more now, probably because I see time running out eventually at some point. So every gig I see as something very special and I really thoroughly enjoy it. Our career has been a weird one really, because first time round, it was only four or five years before it started to disintegrate, then it was six years before we played together again. So all our early work has been condensed and we’ve had a longer career ever since.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): There is some cruel inevitability about this. It turns out I was never a rock’n’roller, I was just some funny old vaudeville act all the time, bursting to get out. Being on your own is very different to having six of your friends round you to distract the attention. But there’s something about it that goes back through to Max Wall and Tommy Cooper – the whole music hall tradition, with that black humour. Originally, the show was going to be a load of showbiz anecdotes, but a friend said, ‘You should really do the story of your dad.’ So while it is funny and is about the stupid things that have happened to me, it also includes what went on with my father, which has made it a more rewarding experience. The thing was, I never really talked to my mum about it. Like most English people, we just didn’t discuss the way we were feeling. But after this, we’ve talked in a way we haven’t done before. I think it’s been very cathartic for both of us. People talk about closure and that’s been the case as far as my father is concerned.

BEDDERS: I’d actually known 18 months before that we were going to do it. I was in the pub with the composer David Arnold and he said, ‘Do you want to do the Olympics?’ And I said, ‘Whaaaat?’ The only thing was, he said I couldn’t tell anyone, so I didn’t say anything to the band or even my family. Then, when we started booking Madness gigs for later that year, dates were getting closer and closer to August 12 and I was thinking, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to say something.’ So I told Chris, and then of course he told everyone else.

SUGGS: We went down for a meeting at Three Mills Studios in Hackney. It was all top secret and hush-hush, and we had to sign all sorts of bits of paper saying we wouldn’t divulge any of the things we’d learned. In their office was a huge mock-up of the ceremony set, which was a sort of wonky version of London. They explained to us that there’d be a huge traffic jam involving lorries and Minis and vintage cars, then Michael Caine would go, ‘I only told you to blow the bloody doors off,’ at which point there’d be a huge explosion, with trucks blowing up, people flying in all directions and street parties emanating out of the backs of all these lorries, and on one of these trucks would be us playing Our House. It all seemed terribly exciting, although we weren’t sure what was happening before or after our bit, cos it was so secret.

CLIVE LANGER (producer): I’d spent a couple of years doing Norton Folgate, so I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to go in again. Plus to get me and Alan Winstanley into the studio is quite an expensive experience, because we don’t work computers.

CARL: Clive had essentially always been the eighth member of the band, but we’d worked with him for so long it felt like a change would be interesting. So we thought we’d try a few tracks with different producers.

SUGGS: We still weren’t sure if we were going to use one person for the whole album, so we sent out some tracks to a load of different folk. We got a great reaction from three or four different people on different songs; they hadn’t all just gone for the same one. So we thought, ‘Well if they’re that passionate, let’s try them all.’

CARL: Obviously it could have gone really wrong, or it could have gone really right – it was just different energies. Stephen was very calm and collected, Owen boisterous and energetic, Charlie an up-and-coming set of ears and Liam very much old-school eight-track analog.

SUGGS: Even though we were working with people we’d never worked with before, we were still trying to capture the same sound: Madness.

CARL: The thing is you can work on any song you like, but once it goes through the process of being worked on by the band, it sounds like us, so there’s never any fear that you’re going to lose ‘the sound’. Unfortunately – or luckily – a song always sounds like Madness as soon as we play it. No producer can really change that.

SUGGS: Carl’s right. We’ve always written slightly diverse kind of songs, but once they go through the old Madness Mincer, they join together one way or another.

CHARLIE ANDREW (producer): I’d been asked to go along to the Madness rehearsals in about 2010. They were writing and rehearsing the new album, and they’d come up with lots of new songs, so I was asked to program some loops for Woody. It was quite a big opportunity for me to be in a room with one of the biggest bands in the country. They had the studio booked to lay down all the tracks they’d been rehearsing as a demo, but they weren’t all available at once to do it, so I put my hand up and said, ‘I can bring my rig in here, set up, and I’ll track it while you’re rehearsing.’ So I took my rig in with my mics and stands and the rest of it, and tracked them and then when they were going for a take I gave them all headphones. I spent a bit of time making sure the mixes were as good as I could get them, added a few production ideas which thankfully went down well, and it progressed from there. So every time they rehearsed throughout the year, I came in with my rig and tracked it.

WOODY: Charlie bringing us new ideas allowed us to continue to evolve, while keeping what we’d learned from our experience.

SUGGS: We were old enough to allow a kid like him to come and give us advice. Sometimes we took it, sometimes ideas were rejected, but at least we were listening. We couldn’t do that before. It was a good way to inject energy into the group.

WOODY: It was a challenge to work with him because he had that youthful innocence. For example, we worked together on one piece and he told me, ‘These words are too backward looking, you should be more modern.’ It gave me quite a kick up the arse.

CHARLIE ANDREW: Working with Madness was a different kind of challenge. They’re all great guys but I kept my head down to start with and got to know them before I started chucking ideas around. With a band like them, it was important to remember their past as well as trying to bring them into a new market.

CHARLIE ANDREW: In the end, I did about 18 demos, but a lot of them felt almost finished. They then got pushed to work with other producers who’d always been in mind — people like Stephen and Owen – who ended up doing a lot of the album. However, for some of the songs we ended up using pretty much the original recordings we’d done together.

CHRIS: Owen admitted to us, ‘I don’t really know what I can do with these songs.’ So in the end we did three songs with him and five songs with Stephen, using a lot of Charlie’s original rehearsal stuff. It meant the album was done in lots of different ways – some in the rehearsal room; some in the studio.

CARL: Ultimately, I think it was difficult to invite someone from outside and give them a free hand. Inside, we all know exactly what something has to sound like.

SUGGS: It was a difficult process. Usually we rely on the producer to pick the songs that go on the album, so as with all Madness decisions there were about five billion phone calls, fights, punch-ups, loving and hugging and making up and falling out.

CHRIS: I really wanted to go back with Charlie and Clive and do an album with a lot of songs on it. But I was fighting a losing battle because other people said it would be very boring.

SUGGS: We started to ask people who else would want to join us on the bill, and pretty much everyone did. So it was great.

SUGGS: Not all the band are rabid royalists. But when they said, ‘Do you want to play at the Queen’s party?’ it seemed like a moment not to be missed.

CHRIS: I got a great letter from Buckingham Palace asking me to do it, so what can you say?

SUGGS: I also got a letter from the Her Majesty herself…

MIKE: …so did I, and they got my name wrong. How terrible is that?

SUGGS: A couple of weeks before, I’d said something disparaging on the radio about Brian May’s hair that triggered a tsunami of angry tweets from Queen trolls. A few days later, my wife told me that I’d been sent a letter from the Queen. I said, ‘What? They’ve got their lawyers on me?’ ‘Not Queen,’ she said, ‘THE Queen.’ Of course, one RSVP’d that one would do it.

SUGGS: Putting us up there was done to keep us out of trouble. Originally, we were meant to be on the main stage, but maybe someone didn’t want us down there and said, ‘Get them out the way; stick them as far away as we can get them.’ The idea of playing on top of the Queen’s house was very bizarre, considering the people we are and what we still get up to in the nefarious moments of our darker corners. The fact we were allowed up there means we must have been good boys at some point, but I can’t remember when.

WOODY (speaking in 2012): A Brit isn’t important, but it would mean a lot to us. People like to be loved, don’t they? We’ve just been overlooked, and it’s becoming rather rude now. It’s bizarre. If you ask anyone who they think is the archetypal British band, they’d say Madness.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): The Brits are meant to be about achievement. Well, if we haven’t already achieved enough to win one, I don’t know what else we can do.

WOODY (speaking in 2012): Imagine being in a band who, throughout the 80s, outsell every other band and you’re in the charts for longer than any other band and you’re not considered the best; nothing, for year after year. We never once got any awards for best single, video, album… nothing. And you think, ‘We’re considered a joke.’ We got one Ivor Novello for Our House but it was an absolute one-off, given to the writers.

CHRIS (speaking in 2012): To be honest, it’s an industry award, so it’s not worth getting all hot and bothered about. It’s certainly never bothered me.

LEE: I had my reservations about doing this one at first because it was an in-out, one-off show. I would have preferred to have done several shows – when in Rome and all that – but it wasn’t to be.

CARL (speaking in 2012): Madness in 2012 is a fucking nightmare. It’s conflict, it’s fights, it’s arguments, it’s inordinate hours of rehearsing, it’s fighting to go and do gigs where there’s no money involved but you’re doing it for the future, it’s keeping crew together with you for a crazy amount of years, it’s like being in a family but also carries the insanity and dysfunctionality of being in a family, it’s mad as fucking hatters and that’s a fact. But we still get the best out of each other and what we share together is an amazing thing. And for all our cranky and obdurate ways, that’s what makes us who we are. It’s been a benchmark for personal growth, because you can see who’s evolved and who’s not.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): These days, it seems like the madder ones in the group have got less mad and the saner ones have got more sane. Although that may be a sweeping generalisation that could blow up in my face.

CHRIS (speaking in 2012): We do still have a laugh – apart from a few strop-offs. I’m a doubter; I over-analyse. Lee calls me Victor Meldrew. I’d prefer to say I’m realistic.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): There IS a good deal of hot-headedness, which is why I tend to mediate quite a lot. This thing is, some of the band have developed brains, which is a bit unfortunate. It was much easier when we had one brain between the lot of us.

MIKE (speaking in 2012): The problem is, there’s a lot of chiefs and not a lot of Indians these days. I’d like everyone just to do what I say, but they don’t. Carl can be very difficult but he breaks boundaries – he wants every song to be great.

CARL (speaking in 2012): Whatever happens elsewhere, we always shake hands before we go onstage, and there’s an intense loyalty to each other, a base loyalty that is unshakeable. I was speaking to Justine Frischmann of Elastica once, and she said, ‘Jesus, we were together two years, and we can’t even sit in a room together now.’ Well we can. We may not do interviews together, but we can relate, it’s OK.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): We do argue often. But I think we need it for something to happen on stage.

CARL (speaking in 2012): I agree. We’re still all very passionate. When we started in the 70s, the atmosphere in London was very dark. There was a lot of poverty, a lot of violence. When you wandered in some neighborhoods, it was, ‘What you are looking at?’ Part of me wants to keep this constant notion of danger and use it to perform. The thing is, we have a lot more experience now, we’ve been through a lot, lost relatives, seen our children and grandchildren born. So it’s much more complex to know who we are on stage now, to continue the same parameters as those of our beginnings in a way still eccentric and crazy. Rudeboy on stage and then papa when you get home.

CARL (speaking in 2012): We’re not really playing the record-release game any more. It’s really about our live performance. That’s where the majority of income is. Records are more a signpost, in my view, of where we are as people.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): We play a few festivals every year, make an album every three or four years, and it just seems to keep rolling along.

SUGGS: We turned up on Saturday afternoon and everything seemed quite normal, like a municipal park with a few tents in it. They’d blocked off The Mall so it was eerily silent, as if the end of the world had come, but we could hear a bit of music drifting out behind us, Elton John and the like.

LEE: We had had these little golf buggies to get around and someone kept bashing into the back of us. I turned round and it was Elton himself, grabbing the driver’s wheel and putting his foot on the accelerator. We’re all kids at heart aren’t we?

SUGGS:  Next minute we get a call to go and rehearse on the roof. So we jump back in our buggies and drive through the palace gates; policemen saluting us, Household Cavalry unflinching as we wave and smile.

CHRIS: It was mad, but very amusing. We went in the side of the building and were directed to this little back staircase that led to the servants’ quarters.

LEE: There were two security fellas. One looked like a bit of a hippy, with the old thing in his ear. The other was the classic man in a suit, like something out of From Russia With Love or something, and he accompanied us up these very narrow stairs.

SUGGS: They obviously weren’t letting us anywhere near the silver, so we were sent up the tradesman’s entrance, watched very closely by some very heavily-armed personnel.

LEE: There was also this little lift, but you’re only allowed a maximum of two people in it at any one time, so I decided to climb the spiral stairs too. At the top of each floor, there seemed to be the same fella – same haircut, same clothes – and I was told, ‘Not a good sight, walking into the palace with a bottle of Budweiser.’

SUGGS: After we got to the top, there was a whole floor of people who work in the palace, all having parties in their various rooms, which we were invited to. They were very charming, but we had to go to our own dressing room.

CHRIS: It looked like a youth hostel, with all these little rooms where the people that work there live. It was like Upstairs Downstairs; I was thinking, ‘Blimey it’s got its own culture. Maybe some people were born here.’

WOODY: The staff were nice – very lovely. I was even introduced to the man who deals with the pole on the roof; his nickname is ‘Flaggy’.

SUGGS: After a while we just hung around in this room in the east or west wing. There was absolutely nothing to nick; there wasn’t even a chair. We were locked in until such time as we were unleashed.

CARL: I was looking out of this small window and you can see up the Mall; it’s incredible. It was the best view of London I’d ever had – you could see everything.

SUGGS: You realise that the Queen has had every landmark in London arranged so she can see them from her bedroom window.

LEE: It was an amazing view: St Paul’s Cathedral… Nelson’s Column… the London Eye. It was a real moment for us – phenomenal. Never to be repeated.

SUGGS: Unlike The Beatles, I didn’t have a jazz Woodbine in there, but I did have a fag out of the toilet window, even though it was meant to be No Smoking. I remember there were shadowy figures on the rooftop opposite and I had one of those laser dots on my forehead. Then we were called to do our rehearsal and we climbed up some rather rickety wooden stairs and out on to the roof. We realised at this point that it was pitched, not flat, so we had to scrabble over the guttering. Around the corner they’d built us a flat platform out of scaffolding and planks that jutted out over the building so the audience could see us. It was quite precarious and because I’m not too good with heights, I found it difficult. And then of course it started to rain – and I mean really started to rain. But despite all that, we rehearsed the songs, and it all went fine.

SUGGS: Because we heard about the Olympics first, we’d agreed to play Our House for them – and then the Jubilee wanted us to play it too, so there was a bit of argy-bargy about performing the same song at both events. The Olympics people were particularly worried that the Jubilee would upstage them; would people really want to hear us playing it twice? We proffered the idea of doing House of Fun at the palace instead, but the fact it’s about a teenage kid buying Durex probably wasn’t the best celebration to end the Queen’s party. So in the end we compromised by playing half of Our House, and then going straight into It Must Be Love. So everyone was happy.

SUGGS: I’d been fearing the worst, but on the day of the concert, it stopped raining, and there was a very jolly atmosphere backstage. We did another rehearsal, and then the day drew on without anything really dramatic happening. We just sat around waiting.

CARL: I’d brought my children along, and my son Casper called me asking how long ’til we started to play. Hearing the pride in his voice brought a lump to my throat.

SUGGS: The call came just as it was starting to get dark, about 8.30pm, and we basically followed the same procedure as before. So we jumped in the golf buggies, went up the staff entrance, and climbed the rickety ladder once more.

CHRIS: We were led out on to the roof again, but this time we were surrounded by armed police. I was a bit on edge – until they asked to have their photo taken with us.

LEE: One of the things I remember most was looking down and realising that they’d used zinc instead of lead on the roof. I thought, ‘Fucking cheapskates!’ I was tempted to take some of it home, but I didn’t.

SUGGS: It was a completely different view when we got out there and were greeted by I don’t know how many people stretching right down the Mall. It really was the most extraordinary sight and that’s when it hit home exactly what we were doing. Because of the crowd the adrenaline was going, so I wasn’t really thinking about where I was, which stopped the old vertigo.

CHRIS: I just remember that while we played, they had snipers on the roof to the left and right of us. You could just see these shadowy figures all over the place. That made it a bit more real.

SUGGS: It was like the Matrix – you can take the blue pill or the red pill and we’d obviously taken the wrong one and we were in some parallel universe where Madness were playing on the roof of Buckingham Palace. I can recall Mike saying, ‘What are we doing here? I can’t understand what we’re doing here.’ I had to tell him, ‘Just hang on in there; it’s happening. Don’t think about it too much or you’ll lose it.’

MIKE: I just found the whole thing very exciting and very unexpected. It was a great honour.

CHRIS: It was my idea that we should sing, ‘One’s house / In the middle of one’s street.’ So that’s what we ended up doing. Prince William enjoyed it – he told me later he thought it was really funny.

SUGGS: I thought that because we were playing on the roof at night, we wouldn’t be very easy to spot, but of course the lightshow turned out to be the most iconic image of the whole proceedings. Or so I’ve been told.

CARL: The digital mapping people who put all that imagery on the front of the Palace really did us proud. It was amazing; we really owe them a lot.

SUGGS: I don’t remember ever having a reaction quite like the one we got to that. There was an audible gasp when we turned the front into a block of flats. People actually thought it had collapsed.

CARL: I wish my father had been alive to see that moment, because it really was something else.

WOODY: When we finished, there was this kind of hushly silence because we were so far away. And then we looked down The Mall and there was this distant roar which got closer as the sound travelled up to us. It was simply amazing.

SUGGS: It was certainly right up there with anything we’d ever done before, but the whole thing seemed to pass in a flash, as things of this enormity always seem to.

LEE: After we’d finished we were rushed downstairs on this tiny spiral staircase, through all these vaulted walls and catacombs.

SUGGS: We all piled down because they told us they wanted us to join the finale with Paul McCartney, singing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da – not anyone’s favourite of all The Beatles songs, but at least the lyrics weren’t too challenging.

SUGGS: We were ushered into this tent and stood in line ready to meet Her Maj. It was already pretty bizarre, then all of a sudden I realised, ‘Hang on, she’s coming towards us.’

LEE: So the Queen comes over and shakes your hand. Kylie Minogue says, ‘This is the man from Madness’ and then Gary Barlow says, ‘Yes, he’s the saxophonist.’ Now the etiquette is that you don’t speak to the Queen, she has to speak first. But I just couldn’t contain myself. I said, ‘Ma’am, we can now retire gracefully.’ She just looked up and walked off. And I was like, ‘Not you Ma’am! Me! Us! We can retire gracefully!’ It was quite embarrassing.

SUGGS: I had no idea what I was going to say. So I attempted a joke and said, ‘Excuse me Ma’am, are you still into football?’ She said, ‘No, not really.’ So I said, ‘Can I have your Cup Final tickets then?’ And she said, ‘That’s Tommy Cooper.’ And it must have been 40-odd years since he said that to her but she remembered it, quick as a flash. They say she’s bright, the Queen. She can certainly remember vintage comedy material when she hears it. After she’d passed up the line, Charles came along, who’s very nice, and then Camilla, who was also very charming. I said to her that I thought Charles made a great speech about how proud he was to be British and how proud he was of his mum.

LEE: The whole thing was so strange; it must have happened, but I don’t even remember shaking Prince’s Charlie’s hand.

CHRIS: There was a reception in a posher bit of the palace…

SUGGS: …up in the Bow Room, which was full of princes and princesses and all these iconic showbiz figures, plus our families, including my wife and kids.

CHRIS: They sent the younger Royals down, like Harry and William, and they all mingled.

SUGGS: It was a big enough room, but not too big to feel like a crush. The champagne was flowing and the canapés were flying.

LEE: I gave Robbie Williams a kiss and also met Stevie Wonder in the toilet – that was a weird one.

CHRIS: I met him too, which was brilliant. I said, ‘Hi Stevie, I’m just a poor black kid.’ He knew I was joking and he was into it – I wasn’t being racist or anything.

LEE: Elton John also pinched me on the cheek and said, ‘Get out of my way you cheeky little bugger.’

CHRIS: He’d tried to sign us years earlier on Rocket Records, so I said to him, ‘We all really like you’ and he went, ‘Well why didn’t you sign to my fucking record label then?’ But he was only mucking about – he’s class.

CARL: It was like I was walking through a dream, seeing that sense of Royal protocol have its effect on people. The protocol when you’re around the Royals is very stiff and you’ve got to be on your best behaviour. The spine straightens, one behaves oneself, however Republican you are.

SUGGS: It had already got even more surreal by this point; Mike was having another meltdown standing between Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, still saying ‘What are we doing here? What are we doing here?’ Everyone was elbowing everyone else to go and say hello to someone, who was being elbowed to go and say hello to someone else. Will.i.am was talking to Prince William, so I bowled up to say hello and they both strolled off in opposite directions, leaving me standing on my own.

CARL: I introduced my daughter to Tom Hanks, which was a big moment; he was such a charming man. She’d just started out acting and he was very complimentary and encouraging. They spoke a little and he motivated her and gave her tips. She was actually blushing, which I’d never seen before. I said, ‘What’s going on?’ and she was like, ‘Dad – it’s Tom Hanks.’

LEE: I’d promised the girl who did all our graphics and projections that I would get Kylie Minogue’s autograph; I was like, ‘Not a problem.’ But of course, when it came to do it, my bottle went and I couldn’t ask her. I just melted – what a plonker.

SUGGS: I remember I threw a plastic glass down on the floor and Princess Beatrice saw me and said, ‘Do not litter my granny’s house.’ She picked it up, and quite rightly gave it back to me. In a dressing room you just throw a plastic glass on the floor, but in the grand ballroom at the Palace, you don’t. She might have beheaded me or had us all sent to the Tower.

CARL: I also took a tiny bit of paper from the palace toilets that said, ‘Please turn the lights out after using.’ I framed it and put it in my toilet.

SUGGS: I just remember that they served the most delicious canapés; these royal vol-au-vents that were fluffed within an inch of their lives.

WOODY: The love and welcome we got from the Royal Family and the staff and everyone involved was incredible. It was also lovely to bump into all the people who were still around after all these years, like Elton John and Paul McCartney, and all the up and coming kids like Gary Barlow. We finally felt part of it – part of British culture.

CARL: The whole day was unreal, like a wonderful anaesthetic. It was unique, brilliant, strange, odd and wonderful. Like walking through someone else’s life in slow motion. And you feel a bit like the grandfather sitting in the corner watching everything.

SUGGS: I don’t know about it being the weirdest but it certainly had the most impact. We only did one-and-a-half songs but you would have thought we’d done an experiment in popular music. All my friends were all quite amazed by the impact it had, certainly in terms of putting us in the ‘national treasure’ box. I don’t think we should really be in there. I don’t think we’re Cliff Richard, let’s put it that way. We haven’t always been good boys. Anyway, what is a national treasure? Fuck knows.

CARL: I just felt that the connection we seemed to have with the British public suddenly came into sharp focus. I really did feel that we somehow represented the people; the working man’s band.

WOODY: It was almost as if everyone had said, ‘Oh, I quite like that lot.’ There was an obvious fondess for us. We were quite surprised and didn’t expect it at all.

CARL: I felt there was a connection between the workers and the royals and we were somehow a bridge to that. It certainly felt like that.

SUGGS: It was an extraordinary feeling, and it’s only in hindsight that I’ve been able to think about it properly. So yes, it was mind-blowing to stand on the roof of Buckingham Palace singing Our House. Yes, it did feel like some sort of vindication of what we’re about. But most of all, it was just great fun and we had a brilliant day. And by 12.30pm it was all over.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): You can’t look backwards or forwards too much but I feel I’m becoming a better singer, but not necessarily in the classic sense. I’m more confident in what I’m doing for sure. I’ve been very fortunate with my voice. It was never a great voice but it’s stayed; it hasn’t gone anywhere fortunately. I drink and smoke and shout all night and it’s still there, thereabouts, whatever there is of it. I also feel deep responsibility about being the frontman, so I never play the ‘I’m not singing that’ card.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): Ours is the kind of music that is very potent live and it makes people want to jump up and down for some peculiar reason. I worry sometimes about some of the people in the crowd trying to jump up and down like they’re 18 but it’s probably good because we’re providing a service offering aerobic exercise.

MIKE: We kicked the night off by playing a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday on the giant organ. The Albert Hall shuddered and we leapt on stage to a startled gathering of a few hundred of his mates. Dances were danced and cold drinks were being drunk with a fury. During our version of Sex and Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll it came to my attention that amongst the flailing arms was the great man himself, down at the front frugging like a baddie in his big red braces. A few of us knew him cos we’d seen him around and about and he was Ian Dury’s close pal to the end. He had a great sense of humour, a vast knowledge of music and a real fascination for the absurd and the ridiculous, so we had a lot in common.

SUGGS: By this time, we were all discussing what we were going to wear, which seemed a rather important thing. There was a thought that we should all wear grey suits and black turtleneck jumpers but that all fell to pieces, as it always does with us trying to do anything collectively. In the end I settled for a three-ply grey mohair suit, paired with a fantastic Vivienne Westwood tie with a very subtle sort of punk exploding Union Jack on it.

ANNE (Suggs’s wife): He wasn’t really drunk because he knew he had to go to Stuttgart the same day. He just got on stage, which he always does, and said how much he loved Sting. That was about it.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): We were trying to think of some highfalutin’ title for it, but in the end it is what it is. It’s my life story, in words and music.

SUGGS: We were given an address in Dagenham which turned out to be the old Ford factory. It was a bit like a scene from The Avengers. We got down there and there were lots of circus tents and marquees approximating the kind of buildings that would be utilised for the backstage area. In the middle of the car park of the old factory they’d marked out an exact scale replica of the Olympic Stadium and the running track. We had the most bizarre experience of pretending we were in the most glamorous setting in the world rather than the car park of a disused car factory with a motorway beside us. So we just wobbled around the outer perimeter on the open truck singing Our House and trying to avoid the potholes. It was all rather intriguing and exciting.

CARL: The thing that got me was watching the volunteers. It really hit me how much they’d invested in it all. For me, that was the best part of it.

LEE: To try out the harness, I had to come back from France, where I’d been playing at the Reggae Sun Ska festival with the Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra. I said, ‘Can’t we just get Agent 00 Thommo to test it?’ but the authorities insisted it was me. And as much as I love doing my own thing with the Ska Orchestra, Madness has, and always will, come first. So this bloke in a limo comes to pick me up, looking like the same bloke I saw at Buckingham Palace – same hair, same clothes. I remember thinking ‘Is this a joke?’ So he takes us all the way back from Bordeaux, off to King’s Cross, then Stratford, wearing a couple of dustbin liners as it was chucking down with rain. He drops me off and says, ‘Thank you sir’. What a palaver that was. So I go to the rehearsal and put on a kilt, which had the St George’s Cross on it, along with my Union Jack underpants, which looked more like a thong with my thighs. But then I got word from HQ that I can’t wear the St George’s Cross in case we upset the Scottish and the Welsh. So we came to an agreement, put another couple of stripes on and – hey presto! – we had a makeshift Union Jack and everyone’s a winner. I didn’t think the St George’s Cross would offend anyone, but there you go.

WOODY: Backstage before the ceremony itself was lovely. We were hanging out behind the scenes with all these wonderful people, which was incredible.

CARL: We were talking to the likes of Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Elbow and Kate Moss, and it was very relaxing and calm. When you’re a veteran, you’re much more approachable than when you were young, when it’s all about who’s got the best dressing room at Top of the Pops. You no longer feel you have to compete, but can chat as equals.

SUGGS: It was a bit like that TV programme Stella Street; I had Pete Townshend next door, Liam Gallagher in the room next to him, the Spice Girls next to him… it was an amazing atmosphere.

LEE: Scary was the only Spice Girl I met – she was absolutely gorgeous. I also said hello to Liam Gallagher.

CHRIS: I had a chat with Roger Daltrey, who really is top class. He told us some great stories and said The Who got turned down by Butlin’s back in the day; I was in hysterics.

LEE: I spotted Ray Davies among the crowd, so wearing my fez and everything I went over and shook his hand. He said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, ‘Baggy Trousers.’ He said, ‘Ah, the penny’s dropped.’

GUY GARVEY (Elbow): We’d been told it was a dry backstage until 10pm, with no booze. And I got really stroppy, so we ended up smuggling in a case of Guinness, a case of lager and a load of spirits.

NEIL TENNANT (Pet Shop Boys): We were just excited to see all the athletes as we waited to go on. ‘Oh my God, it’s Mo Farah and Tom Daley!’ All these faces we’d been watching on TV. It was quite a moment.

SUGGS: Next thing, we were ushered into this holding shed, where we had to wait before we were unleashed into the stadium. So in front of me are The Who. On our left are the Pet Shop Boys on bicycles with traffic cones on their heads. And on our right are some spotty herberts called One Direction. Bringing up the rear are the Spice Girls, who are behind us doing some vocal warm-ups. And Pete Townshend turns around and says, ‘Someone throw them a fucking fish.’

LEE: I had my photo taken with One Direction. Their lorry broke down, so I thought, ‘This is time for a photocall.’ They were a nice bunch of boys, although I didn’t have a clue who they were. Lovely haircuts – I tried to buy a bit off them.

SUGGS: It was nice chatting to One Direction. They reminded us of us when we were that age. Young guys just starting out in their careers – knocking about and having a laugh together. – They were the same kind of character I was 30 years ago, saying, ‘There’s no way I’ll still be singing Baggy Trousers when I’m an old man of 30.’ So there we all were, slowly being asphyxiated by carbon monoxide. Life does get surreal sometimes, but no more surreal than that.

CARL: Coming out into the stadium was breathtaking. I love Roman history, and it felt like being in the Colosseum. I don’t know if I was nervous; it was so surreal. It was like walking through a big marshmallow dream.

MELANIE CHISHOLM (Spice Girls): There was a huge roar as we all entered the stadium, which gave us an extra boost of adrenaline. We’re not known for being particularly slick. In fact, shambolic is more like it. But it went perfectly.

SUGGS: I suddenly realised I was performing in front of 75 billion trillion people, which made the old nerves ever worse. Then, as the lorry lurched out into the stadium, I actually forgot the words to Our House, which is strange after 30 years. I had to say to Carl, ‘Quick! What’s the first line of Our House?’ But I think I got away with it.

LIAM PAYNE (One Direction): The whole ceremony was amazing. It was a performance I’ll never forget.

SUGGS: It was amazing fun, although I couldn’t hear anything. And because we were on the back of a truck, there was nothing to hang on to. So it was a bit scary, trying not to fall off this bloody lorry in front of the entire population of the planet.

WOODY: I was just glad we were going round the track on a lorry and didn’t have to run.

CARL: It was certainly nothing like an empty car factory in Dagenham.

LEE: The harness was light as a feather; all Velcro and nylon. They’d certainly moved on a long way since the Baggy Trousers days, when it was all nuts and bolts and big chunks of leather. I’m having to use a thicker wire nowadays though.

DAVE ROBINSON: I don’t know if anyone noticed, but underneath Lee’s kilt was a load of jewellery on a chain that suddenly dropped down; it was literally the crown jewels. Very funny.

LEE: I can’t think of a better place to be – up in the air with a jockstrap on, wind in me hairs, crown jewels hanging from me scrotum. The only thing was, by the time I got down and unhooked, I had to run to try and catch up with the truck. All the band were still playing, and I just put me hand out and Carl tried to pull me up but me legs and lungs and teeth dropped out and I waved it goodbye.

LEE: Bedders came back for this and Buck House after being on sabbatical for a couple of years and rightly so. It was great.

CHRIS: The ceremony had been arranged by David Arnold, who is friends with Bedders, so he knew all about it before us and of course we got him to do it – plus David wanted him to do it too. It seemed fitting to have the seven original members of Madness together for that and the Jubilee – two great events.

WOODY: It was just lovely to have him back.

SUGGS: Even though he hadn’t played on the new album and hadn’t been around for a little while, he knew he was welcome back any time.

CARL: The thing is, with us, you can’t leave this group; we know where you live, we’ll find you. Chris left the band for a few years, then realised he was missing it and came back. Mark was the same and was replaced by another bass player we loved but who was keeping his place warm – and he knew that. The group is the seven of us, no matter what happens. It is a magic number, a unique relationship.

SUGGS: I think we’re fairly unique. It’s not as if there are three leaders and five other members who only come to the concerts. We’re a real group of seven people and we’ve all known each other since we were kids; it’s a symbiotic relationship.

SUGGS: You start off and you’re happy to get a gig at the pub, then you have to make a record and you think that’s enough but it keeps rolling along and suddenly there you are playing the closing ceremony at the Olympics after being on the roof of Buckingham Palace and so it keeps going. We knew we were very privileged and did appreciate it. It’s a great job being in a band and we’d been through enough downs to appreciate the ups.

CHRIS: We got no money from it either time. Well, 200 quid from the Olympics for the publishing. I will carry that grievance to my grave!

WOODY: It was an incredible experience – I still can’t describe it properly. I just thought it was very moving and all the acts were great; it was just a good show. We clung on for dear life on the back of that lorry, but somehow we managed to make it.

SUGGS: The best thing that happened was right at the end. I was in a car, rushing to get home for a party, when I spotted Ray Davies. ‘Any chance of a lift?’ he said. How could I refuse the great London chronicler in song?

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): You see a load of kids singing along to our songs that they presumably downloaded for nothing – the little swines – but they did learn the words so they do actually know something about the band.

OLLY MURS (singer): To come on stage and join Madness for It Must Be Love was an absolute honour. They were a big musical influence to me growing up so to go on and sing with them in front of my home crowd was awesome.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): Mike wrote the original My Girl and he’s written this one. I don’t know exactly the details but he is on his second marriage, so it could be very specific – one song per marriage.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): We’ve always struggled with the fact that some sections of the media think we’re a bunch of clowns. But we put a lot of effort into what we do; we’re not buffoons. It’s hard sometimes to express the idea of being positive without coming across like you’re a joke of some sort. It’s odd. But I’m not complaining – the public love Madness.

SUGGS: The album was meant to come out in 2011, when obviously we didn’t know we’d be playing the Olympics and the Jubilee. So for it to come out after we’d been on TV in front of millions of people was just a happy accident. We’re not that well organised!

CHRIS: It’s very good, easily up there with our best. Sort of Seven era in a way, and definitely different to Norton.

LEE: I don’t know, I think that because we moved producers and studios a bit, the album kind of lost its momentum a bit. I definitely noticed it.

WOODY: There are still some classics on it; I love some of Carl’s songs, like Misery.

GRAEME ‘BUSHERS’ BUSH (bass player): I liked Can’t Keep A Good Thing Down, La Luna and Death Of A Rude Boy.

WOODY: What’s good about it is that we weren’t shying away from archetypal Madness tracks, we are who we are. That’s one of our great strengths – to be able to say, ‘This is what we do and we do it very well.’

SUGGS: Also, unlike Folgate, there was no concept behind it. We were just trying to make an album of great songs.

CHRIS: We actually had a lot of good songs that didn’t make the grade – most of which I wrote. I said, ‘Let’s put all 21 songs on the album’ but that was never going to happen. Some people were like, ‘No, no, no – we only need 11.’ In the end we ended up somewhere in between.

SUGGS: It was interesting that Woody and his brother Nick co-wrote a couple of the tracks. But it wasn’t the start of anything new – we just happened to really like them. Any song that makes it on a Madness album has to be one that we all like and has to have had some strength in the first place.

WOODY: Nick helping me to write a couple of songs did change the dynamic a bit. Every one of us has always put in our two penn’orth worth, but maybe I was just getting a bit pushier in my old age?

CARL: It was certainly an interesting experience not to work with Clive Langer, but in retrospect I have to say that it makes more sense with a single producer.

SUGGS: The problem with using a lot of different producers was that it did lead to a long and protracted process – including the sodding cover.

SUGGS: Being our tenth studio album, we wanted to do something special with the cover, but we couldn’t actually decide on a title. Lots of them were being bandied around and we were arguing, as we often do.

CARL: There were seven ideas brawling for a title…

LEE: …The Rake’s Progress, Doolally, Dial M For Murder…

CARL: …I thought after ten albums it should have been called The Ten Commandments of Madness.

LEE: My personal favourite was Circus Freaks, but I was bound to choose that as it’s one I wrote with Woody. We had so many, it was like being a kid in a sweet shop.

CHRIS: I’ve never known such consternation over what to call an album.

WOODY: The problem was, we all put ideas forward, but then we went, ‘Oh, I’ve gone off that one.’

SUGGS: You should have seen the teeth and the clumps of hair and the black eyes that went with it.

MIKE: I was quite keen on Men Of Steel – there was a plan that we would all appear on the cover in Superman outfits. But then someone didn’t fancy the tights.

SUGGS: The only thing we could agree on was to go to Peter Blake, the great British pop artist, to do the cover for us. We’d already been negotiating with his wife, Chrissie, to see if he’d be interested. And then she asked us if we’d like to play at his 80^th birthday party at the Albert Hall back in June, which was a great honour and an enormous amount of fun.

CARL: So we went to see Sir Peter to see if he’d do a painting for us.

SUGGS: An excitable delegation was dispatched to his studio. What a place! An old warehouse down an alley, Fulham way, with two floors of the most weird and indeed wonderful. Stuffed squirrels playing snooker, watched on by a life size waxwork of Joe Louis, Max Miller’s shoes, Tommy Cooper’s fez, huge collections of model cars, boats, trains, fruit machines and painting covering every surface.

WOODY: It was a fantastic experience – absolutely brilliant.

SUGGS: After a guided tour, we settled in the kitchen with the great man. ‘To tell you the truth lads,’ he said, ‘I’m always a bit wary of doing album covers for bands because they change their mind.’

LEE: At this point, the front-runner for the album title was Circus Freaks – it seemed to be the only one we could all agree on.

SUGGS: So we said, ‘No no no, it’s definitely going to be called Circus Freaks Peter.’ And he went off and did this huge canvas of all things circus… and then of course we phoned him up a few weeks later and said, ‘We’ve changed our minds.’ And all I could hear in the background was the sound of a canvas being torn up and chucked in the bin.

WOODY: He was so pissed off that he said, ‘Right, what I’m going to do from now on, every time you call up with a new title, I’m just going to write it down and cross out the previous one until such time as you’ve decided.’ So that’s what he did.

SUGGS: People in our management were saying, ‘Do you really want to show the indecision in this band?’

CARL: I sort of liked it – it showed the real complexity of trying to come to a decision in a group like ours. And as usual, it was the consensus that saved us.

CHRIS: In the end, our manager Garry came up with Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da, which was the only one we all more or less agreed on.

CARL: At the end of the day, it was just a load of old compromise because our managers were so exhausted by our in-fighting.

SUGGS: It was just a line from My Girl II that means ‘yes’ in four different languages. After all the complicated titles, it just seemed like a simple statement of where Madness were at. Plus, given the climate of doom and gloom, and our responsibility as a band is to cheer people up, we thought it was better to say ‘yes yes yes’ rather then ‘no no no’.

WOODY: We half-thought that Peter had been joking about the crossed-out names thing, so when the cover arrived at our offices, we were still expecting a piece of art.

SUGGS: As you can see, he didn’t exactly put quite the same amount of effort into it as Sergeant Pepper…

WOODY: …but I still thought it was fantastic; it fitted the Madness spirit so well.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): Things couldn’t be better for us at the moment. It’s been a crazy, surreal and rather wonderful year and we’re just making the most of it.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): We were never that rock ‘n’ roll. I think ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ in inverted commas is the one that gets a bit dodgy; your leather trousers and your tassled jacket and all that can start to look a bit manky when you’re over 40. But we set about our work in the same state of mind that we have now – the way we look, the sort of music we like. It’s not like we’ve deviated to some dark corner of young popular culture or ever tried to be fashionable, really. I think we just carved our own little world. And grew older gracefully.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): The setlist is going through the usual process: we’ve had three punch-ups about it so far. It’s coming on. There’s never a dull moment in Madness, I must say. Quite seriously we’ve had 45 emails, six band meetings, 42 arguments and three punch-ups. And we still haven’t decided what it’s going to be yet. Of course you play the chestnuts and they’ll always be there and they’re a great joy to play. And then a certain amount of the new songs and then there are discussions about slightly obscure songs that we haven’t played for a long time, just out of interest. That’s when the arguing starts. After 10 albums it gets a bit complicated as to what songs are going to make it and what aren’t. I think that’s one of the saving graces of the band as well: the filtration process is so convoluted that nothing gets past it unless it’s good.

WOODY (speaking in 2012): I’m not really involved in it personally but I know that other members of the band are. Chris is very keen on making the weekend go well, so he’s really getting involved, picking films for the cinema, and mixing with the fans on the weekend itself. To be honest I’m not really up on what’s hip and what isn’t, so I leave it to people who have that energy. It’s lovely to think that Madness fans all come and congregate for a great weekend, and that’s all I’m bothered about. My part is to go along and play the music as best I can, so I try not to get involved in anything else.

CARL (speaking in 2012): I have to say that I enjoyed the Weekender tremendously and I’m sure I can say that all the band did too. A great atmosphere in the House of Fun and such a lovely vibe from the audience at both the shows. Great days and good memories.

CHRIS (speaking in 2012): When we do these UK tours around Christmas in November and December, I take the train and go off on my own. You get on the train, read a little newspaper, have a little walk and it’s really nice.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): We always try and play five or six new songs when we play live, for our own benefit and for the future of the band. Because otherwise we would just have fallen into that black hole of 80s nostalgia. We needed to move forward a bit, and we have.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): The greatest pleasure of being in Madness is that we really do have a good time on stage. It’s spontaneous – you never really know what’s going to happen. You can write a song that you think is going to go down great and it doesn’t, and vice-versa.

CARL (speaking in 2012): People look to us as a group in times of crisis because they want a little happiness. The motto of Madness, is that we know that people live and die, that horrible things are happening, but there is a place for it, as there is a place to be fucking happy to be alive: Call for Madness! We are unhappy! We need cheering up!

CHRIS (speaking in 2012): People do often say, ‘I was really depressed and your music got me through it.’ It’s very touching, it always is. To know that you helped someone, that listened to Madness and it helped them out, it’s quite nice.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): Touring now is different in the sense that I can remember most of it. When I was 18 it was pretty much a blur.

CARL: Newcastle rocked, no other word for it. The crowd were fantastic – probably the best we’d had so far. What a night! A great reaction to the set and a whole heap of joy in the house. I was impressed, elated, pleased, satisfied and grateful. It’s moments like this that make it all worthwhile.

CARL: Glasgow was sensational and the crowd excelled themselves as only Glasgow do. Owen Morris, who had worked with us on the album had turned up with his wife. It was actually the first time he had seen us live and he felt that he know understood us – it’s a live thing. I wiped a tear from his face as he choked on words of British pop, beauty, emotion and such…he’s a right softy.

CARL: After the show Suggs, Myself and ‘Dad’ (AKA soundman Ian Horne) watched the production being broken down, watching the riggers up in the gods on the girders – what a balancing act! – and all the gear in its allotted containers being humped out by a small army. It takes about two-and-a-half hours to break it all down and pack it away; surreal and mystifying after having had so many people in the room.

LEE (speaking in December 2012): This tour has probably been the best since the 2-Tone Tour; everybody’s been pretty pro. We had a bit of a pep talk and everyone has been right on the money. It’s a fantastic production, we’ve spent a few quid and everyone is up and buzzing.

JOHNNY LANGER (Man Like Me, support act): We’d averaged a shitload of people every night throughout the tour – 8,000 and 10,000 every night – but the 02 was 16,000 people which was a whole new level for us. We had to adjust to it without much preparation so it was a learning curve, but I think we got used to it. It was just amazing watching Madness and all the levels of production that go into their shows; 30 dudes on sound, 10 dudes on video backdrop, five dudes on lighting. It was incredible seeing the work that goes into their shows and how all their fans still treat them like gods.

CARL (speaking in 2012): What privilege we are enjoying, what affection we have felt. I find it all so hard to express, to be able to give a clear idea of what a wonder it’s been. After all the years and all the time we’ve spent together I can only say what a fabulous journey we’ve had and continue to have. It’s like a never-ending story and I don’t think we’ve got to the best bit yet. Madness has been like a grown-up playpen but with the ‘privilege of responsibility’. Here we are, old dogs for the long walks.

CARL (speaking in 2012): We’re already talking about our next album, which is incredible. But for me it’s really all about writing songs and live performance. The large part of Madness is honesty and audiences know at a subconscious level whether you believe in yourselves or not.

CLIVE LANGER (speaking in 2012): This year has been so big. They’re seen as an English treasure now, playing all these festivals and getting through to the young kids. Everyone just sees them as an evergreen now, as opposed to old Madness. They’ll get their lifetime achievement award very soon.

SUGGS (speaking in 2012): There’s more wind in the sails now than there has been since the early 80s. I enjoy it more now, possibly, than I did then. When you’re young you’re flying around worrying about whether your trousers are heading in the right direction. And now I can take time to take it all in. The reception that we get these days is rather humbling. I feel like we’re on our way again to somewhere relevant. We don’t have to answer to whether we’re an 80s band or not – we’re a bit of both.