Why Quo are ready for some festive ham

"Freddie's Sandwich Bar, how may I help you?"

The voice on the phone is instantly recognisable. I know it's not 'Freddie' but I play along anyway: "Hello Freddie, I'd like the special please."

"We don't have specials sir, you're obviously not a frequent customer are you?" replies Francis Rossi, guitarist and singer with legendary British rockers Status Quo.

Well, actually I have been a been a very frequent customer of the Quo - from teenage headbanging at school discos in the 70s to my first Quo gig experience at Chester's ice rink, then the Prince's Trust concert at the NEC in 1982, the "farewell" gig in Milton Keynes in 1984 and the "one-off" reformation to open Live Aid the next year, and then the comeback and a Midlands gig every few years as the Quo just go on and on.

Status Quo, as ever, are in the middle of yet another tour and Rossi is waiting for the sound check at a venue in Rouen, France, as I thank him for taking the time for a chat.

"Don't worry, I love it. I love talking about me!" he says.

"In this job you hear people saying 'I don't like talking about me' and you think 'You liar'!

"How can you be in this business and not like talking about yourself? You stand on a stage with a little bit of knowledge of an instrument and you say 'Look at me everyone, I'm great'."

Our chat is to tie in with Quo's annual Christmas tour, which takes in Birmingham's LG Arena on December 22, plus the release of yet another greatest hits album, Pictures, and to talk about Status Quo's first ever Christmas single, It's Christmas Time, which is released on December 1 and which marks an incredible 75 UK singles for the band.

Click here to buy tickets for Status Quo at the LG Arena

Written by Quo's Rick Parfitt, it's a typical Quo-lite chugger, infectiously catchy and filled with chiming bells and references to snow and mistletoe.

It's not the only single out with a Quo link either, with a rock-dance reworking of Whatever You Like - called Jump That Rock - released by Quo and German techno outfit Scooter.

I tell Rossi I can hardly believe Quo haven't jumped on the Christmas single bandwagon before.

"Neither can I," he replies, before admitting: "When Rick brought it in I was really reluctant about the idea of it."

But then he adds: "As much as I think it's hammy or corny, whatever I want to say about it, it's a blinding little record and if you're going to do a Christmas record you'd better make it hammy. You can't get cool about a Christmas record - it's got to have every cliché in the book. That's what Christmas is all about."

So do you think you'll beat Sir Cliff this year?

"Sirc, we call him Sirc - we don't get to call him Sir Cliff. Because of the Scooter single as well, people think that might get to number one, and they think the Christmas record might get to number one.

"But each time they think something might get to number one, the Christmas number one will be whatever Simon Cowell's thing comes out with on Christmas week. But if we're lucky we might get the week before.

"The fact that people are talking like that about us, about a band that has been around that long - that we could have two hit singles between now and Christmas and have a very big album going at the moment, it's just . . . wow! I think someone's going to turn round and go 'Got ya!'

"People ask me, what do you want on your gravestone and I want 'I've been getting away with it all my life".

The new Pictures album celebrates 40 years of Quo hits, starting with Pictures Of Matchstick Men back in 1968. It's a bit confusing mathematically though as I remember seeing Quo on their 20th anniversary tour which was in 1982.

"We had a manager at the time who was very much 'Any old anniversary will do'," Rossi explains.

"The first anniversary was from '62 when the band was formed but then there was the anniversary of when we met Rick which was '65, then there was the anniversary of when Rick actually joined and then there was the 40th anniversary of when there were hits, which was Matchstick Men.

"The anniversary is 1962 really, that was when the band was formed."

And does it feel like 46 years since then?

"It's like everything, sometimes you think that's fine, sometimes you think, Jesus a lot's gone by. I get that all the time. You get older and suddenly time goes faster. Your heart rate slows down compared to what it does when we're little, which is why we thought the summers always went on forever . . . no they didn't, your heart was racing."

To tie in with the Pictures album release and to raise money for The Prince's Trust, Quo hosted a star-studded auction at Bonhams this month which saw 50 renowned musicians, artists and stars create their own versions of classic Quo single and album covers which were auctioned for a whopping £112,210.

The designs were from a diverse mix of personalities including the current Quo line-up plus Brian Wilson, Sir Tom Stoppard, Andrew Marr, Alice Cooper, Fiona Phillips, Brian May, Nick Mason, Sir Steve Redgrave, Harry Hill, Chris Tarrant, Rolf Harris, David Shepherd, Chelsea and Liverpool FC and the cast of Coronation Street. You can check out all the designs here.

"I was immensely pleased with it," says Rossi.

"Our manager mentioned it to me. He said we're doing another (greatest hits) album and I thought, oh no not another. They've been doing it to Elvis Presley, so you could be getting Status Quo albums for another 40 years! That's a worry, innit?

"It went extremely well on the night. Some of the things were brilliant."

Rossi was particularly taken with the treatment of the album Heavy Traffic by renowned wildlife artist David Shepherd, which shows a magnificent elephant charging at the viewer.

"That's phenomenal," he says. "They were such lovely people, the Shepherd family. I don't think I've ever taken to anybody like that for a long, long time.

"We raised money for old Chas. I would have thought they'd have fixed his truss by now but we have to keep raising money for the Prince's Truss!"

After apologising for his "useless joke", Francis adds: "Prince Charlie's charity is a bit different from the run of the mill charities, I think.

"Most charities have heartstrings attached to them but this is just kids that can perhaps go from poorer backgrounds and underprivileged backgrounds so that they may have a go at something, and I think that's commendable."

And did you fancy bidding for any of the items yourself?

"I wanted the entire set!"

What of Rossi's own effort, a picture of three matchstick men with guitars?

"I'd have done anything to get out of that. I didn't want to do that and I got some help. I was going to do Whatever You Want and just do a question mark. That would have been fantastic!

"The one I didn't like was Harry Hill's . . . there's something very weird about that one, me and Rick in a pair of blue Y-fronts."

Moving swiftly away from Quo's Y-fronts, but keeping on the subject of The Prince's Trust, we chat about the 1982 charity concert at Birmingham NEC which was attended by Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

"Yeah, that was a goody, but that was a bit weird. We've always had a great response from our audience but he went down better than we did and he didn't do anything, he just walked in the room!

"It's because he looks like the FA Cup, they thought they'd won something. Oh, I shouldn't say that about Charlie, cause I look that myself and I think one of my boys does."

Rossi has happy memories of playing Midlands venues and hails the NEC Arena (now the LG Arena) as the best rock venue in Britain.

"I remember doing Wolverhampton Civic a lot many years ago but my main thing is that the NEC is the best gig that we've got in England. They keep building new ones but none of them quite come up to Birmingham in the terms of when you stand on that stage, how it looks to the people and how we see the people. It is the best venue in England and we've always had a very strong following round there.

"I also remember playing Birmingham Odeon once with Gene Pitney and there was a slope on the stage, it leans to the front and (former Quo bassist) Alan Lancaster fell over and rather than get up and feel silly he stayed on the floor and wriggled about for a while. He developed from that point onwards that if he made a mistake on the stage he'd do it again."

I ask Francis how he finds the energy to tour and record virtually non-stop after all this time.

"I look after myself and I like it," he says "I go to the gym a lot. I started going to the gym about 10 years ago.

"I call myself a 'gym gallon'. A gallon is one of those people that talks so much that you'd rather pour petrol over yourself and set fire to yourself than talk to them any longer, and I'm a bit of a gym gallon talking about gyms and exercise. I like the focus of going to the gym it gets me up every day."

What about Rick Parfitt's health scares of recent years? Parfitt had a quadruple heart bypass in 1997, then three years ago it was announced he was to undergo tests for suspected throat cancer but luckily the growths were found to be to be benign.

That must have been a frightening time for Rossi and the band, I suggest.

"No. I knew he was going to pull through. I know Rick. People said I was being a bit blasé and a bit cold but I said 'No, I know Rick, I'd probably know if he was going to peg it.' I knew Rick was going to be fine."

He adds: "Everyone I know and Rick knows that has had this triple or quadruple heart bypass is on all sorts of medication, but Rick's not on any. We're thinking 'It's a wind-up, you've had a look in there and there's nothing wrong.'

"He's got the constitution of an ox, he had a glass of wine in his hand anyway when he came round!"

Then as suddenly as the conversation started it's over.

"I'm sorry," says Rossi, "I've got to go. It's soundcheck, I should be on the stage."

Another night, another gig, rockin' all over the world.

By Ian Harvey

Click here to buy tickets for Status Quo at the LG Arena