Chad was in a particular talkative mood as we began to quiz him about the success of the debut number one album 'Attack Of The Grey Lantern.'

Were you surprised that it did so well?

"Er yeah! I guess so. Going from the success from the EPs. Up until then each EP had gone higher in the charts, then 'Nosebleed' went top ten. With that in mind we felt it would be really cool to have a top ten album, but a number one was a real surprise. We weren't all together when we found out. Paul and I were in London doing radio stuff whilst the other two were up in Liverpool rehearsing. It was more like a shock."

Why did you choose to do the Isle of Man(sun) gig?

"Well we thought the Isle of Mansun sounded good. We wanted to play somewhere different. I think Status Quo might have been the last band to play there or something. We did a record signing in the HMV and loads of kids turned up. It was great."

It appears that the Mansun saga has travelled overseas, with successful results in Japan.

"It's going great, the album sold really well. All the EPs were only available as imports. They picked up on it big style. So there was quite a high demand for us to release something there before we went there. We made a mini album from the two 'Stripper Vicar' EPs, with a couple of other B-sides and organised a gig for that week. The reason why it was reported that there was madness was because we'd only arranged one gig for about five hundred people. There was more like two thousand people there. They said we could have sold out three or four times. Everyone that didn't have a ticket still came down to the venue just trying to wait out in the streets for us to turn up..............." >>