How have you managed to maintain such a huge gathering of followers over the last 25 years?
John: Well, it's been an interesting career. Since I last appeared on Top Of The Pops, I've been doing about 150 live shows every year. The live shows have always been well received and they consistently worked, it's just the records that haven't been very good. The fans have been great, they've stuck with me through a lot of hit-less years and I think they were as determined as I was that it was time to put an end to the lack of hits.

You've just come off tour too haven't you? How did it go?
John: It was great, as the tour went on the audience started growing in number, as everyone could smell 'the hit'! We also booked the London Palladium for the night the chart came out, so that we could celebrate it if it made it. It was so great, 2,000 people were there, many of whom had worked really hard all year to make it another hit for me. Johnny Walker was there too, giving us the chart rundown. The place just went ballistic. It was just one of those rare, rare gigs when everyone was just so happy. It was a great way to celebrate my birthday, which was that day, but also a brilliant way to thank my fans. I can't thank them enough, it was their hit. I mean, a thousand of them sang on the B-side to just give it a bit of a helping hand. It was such a fantastic birthday present, I never imagined how big it would be.

You mention the B-side, which was a cover of the classic 'House Of The Rising Sun'. Why did you choose that track particularly?
John: Well, we'd kinda noticed that over the years people had started heckling whenever the band performed that song. So, we came up with a good idea for the B-side and thought why not invite all those hecklers to come along to Abbey Road studios to contribute to the track. There was a thousand of them that turned up, but the funny thing is that on 'the hit' they're all named as backing vocalists. See, I'm really quite clever really. I knew if we did that, everyone named would buy one for themselves, as well as for their mum or something...just to say the'd been on a hit!

So what was it like recording at Abbey Road?
John: It was an absolutely great day. I mean neither myself, the band nor the fans had been to Abbey Road before. We had to remind the fans that it wasn't tourists' day out, but that we were there to record the B-side of a potential hit. We couldn't really tell Abbey Road that we were bringing in a group of a thousand hecklers either, so we had to tell them we were bringing in a 'choir'. It was quite funny though because Abbey Road asked what we were bringing them in for and I said that it was for the B-side of my next hit...you could just see them thinking "what on earth is he going to do for the A-side"?