Buster’s still having the best fun...

“They say that they are having fun, but you know that they are not. You can see it.

“Luckily I don’t have that problem. I am really having fun!”

And he always has had.

“A lot of bands can get a bit serious,” says Buster. He’s delighted that seriousness has never been in his nature. Nor has it ever really been in the nature of the band.

As always, fun will be the key element when Family Ents presents Bad Manners with Splodgenessabounds and The Piranhas at Concorde2, Brighton on Sunday, June 10.

“I never thought it would go on as long as this, though,” admits Buster. “When we first started, our aim was just to have fun and see how far we could go with it. Once we got a record deal, we started to take it a little bit more seriously, and then when we got our first release we were competing in a business that really was competitive at the time, and I suppose we were taking ourselves a bit more seriously again.

“But things happen in life. People marry. People die. People don’t get on. Our aim was always to have fun, but there is money involved and there are record companies involved, and nasty stuff does happens, but we always got through it with our humour.

“When anybody left, we always got someone in who was a fun person. We had to get someone who fitted into all the crazy antics of the dressing room.”

And that’s remained the case - even if Buster is, quite literally, not half the man he used to be.

He insists he felt fit enough at 32 stone, but a hernia was the turning point: “I used to do cartwheels on stage, and a 32-stone man crashing down is hard on the stomach muscles, especially if you have got a hernia!”

And so, after a gastric bypass, he slimmed down to his natural body weight, 12 stone - since when he has gone back up a little to about 15 and a half.

“But I really do enjoy it still. People have a laugh. The people around me are different, and in some ways that’s good, that’s refreshing. But you can’t imagine how many times I have done Lip Up Fatty, and I still totally love it!”

Show starts at 7.30pm. Tickets on 01273 673311.