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MADNESS HAVE invented a new disease - tour lag. Characteristics of this disorder include complete withdrawal from not eating in greasy spoons around the globe and being torn from sleep's sweet slumbers by a bellowing tour manager set on depositing you on a coach full of equally sleepy individuals.
To catch this unpleasant illness you must tour extensively in France, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Italy, America and Britain (twice) with as little rest in between as possible. For the group which spent 49 weeks in Britain's top 75, 1980 has been their busiest year yet.
Add the writing and recording of their second highly successful LP and you wonder when they even found time to change their underwear.
Yet somewhere among this bedlam chief nutty boy Suggs managed to buy his very first home in Camden Town - where else? - and is hoping to move in any day now.
"It's on two floors. Upstairs is the flat and downstairs has a potter's studio complete with kiln," he says.
"I'm torn between keeping it as it is and trying my hand at ceramics if I can find the time but part of me wants to transform it into a recording studio.
"I'm also tempted to put a pool table in it and just keep it as a big room where all my mates can come round and I don't have to worry about cleaning it up - I can just go upstairs and forget about it!"
Usually housewarming parties are in order once the new inhabitant has moved in but Suggs is wiser than that; "At the end of our Christmas tour I had a party there. My girlfriend Anne got it started while we were playing at the Hammersmith Odeon so that by the time we arrived back it was in full swing.
"The place was totally demolished.
"I'd bought two carpets with the house and though they weren't worth a lot of money I had to chuck them out because so much booze was spilled and so many fags were dropped that they were totally ruined.
"Chrissy Boy's decorator streak came out and he started ripping off the wallpaper which saved me quite a bit of work!"
Sugg's girlfriend is better known as Bette Bright late of Deaf School. He met her through their producer Clive Langer who was also in Deaf School.
As half the group have musician girlfriends (Bedders maintains a transatlantic affair with Gina of the Gogos while Woody is blissfully married to Jane Mo-Dette) did this mean that it was easier to go out with someone in the music business?
"Definitely, because they understand all the trials and tribulations having gone through it themselves," says Suggs. "I've never met anyone like Anne before - she's so alive and vibrant. Before I knew her it always seemed to be me who wanted to go out and paint the town red but she just leaves me standing. She's got so much energy it's unbelievable.
"She understands the pressure of touring. When I come back off the road I'm a bit disorientated for a few days while I wind down because all of a sudden there's no one telling you what to do and there's no routine."
1981 will see a gradual winding down as far as touring goes, Madness have constantly been on the road since October 1979. But the North London nutters are off to the land of the nips in April to go boldly where they've never gone before.
Far from being out of your hearts, Madness will be bounding on to the screens of your local fleapit along with The Specials, the Bodysnatchers, The Beat, Bad Manners and the Selecter in a film called 'Dance Craze', all about the 2-Tone movement.
And it seems like this has given them a taste for the silver screen because they're currently mulling over ideas for a film of their own.
"It's going to be about us before we became Madness. Trouble is, we don't know at what period to finish it. It'll have a very London feel to it, that's for sure."
When they'll manage to fit in filming this venture is your guess as good as mine, as May has been pencilled in for rehearsals for the next album.
One thing's for sure, though. It might be hard work but ask any member of Madness if they enjoy their life and they'll reply "Absolutely!"
- Contributed by Steve Bringe and Lee "Loobyloo" Buckley
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