Getting out of Bombay was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I'm certain that everyone is staring at me; that they're all whispering and watching behind my back; that they're all waiting for me to fall - or at least to trip.

I was escaping India, the dreamworld or the real world, and I knew that I was running away and so I was panicking. There was a threat. I could come to no decision. I felt impotent and pathetic. Fraudulent. If only I could see further than others...

India is a place full of ghosts. The air is thick with madness and lethargy. I had been in Bombay only three days. Most of that I had spent tripping wide-eyed and unconsciously through the unkempt streets, markets, bazaars, parks and alleyways of the laughing misery class.

I had sensed the estranged hierarchical attitude of the stoic upper class, but had always been with a party. Other people with whom to laugh and discuss and share... an absurd circus of rock stars, film makers, TV people, journalists: enough people to camouflage the confusion; to maintain cheery comforting banter; that kept the Indian impatience, its monstrosity, a distant, bearable dream. For three days I was on the press trip to end all press trips. It was part of the exotic section of the Police's triumphant world tour. I was promoting the Police. Summarising this or that.

The experience! I tried to discard the feelings of frustration and submission, the vague feelings of sell out (and mostly managed it). This was a sign that I was beyond hope. I lost sense of reason. But for three days I was with my people and I got on with my job: interviewing, reporting, looking, listening. I had a great time.

But then these rock stars and film makers - this troupe forcing history into the books and onto the screen - jetted on to Cairo, Egypt, setting up more history and having more fun. I had to get out of Bombay on my own. And I couldn't shut my eyes all the time. But I didn't want to. I wanted to stare and rationalise - or at least believe I was rationalising. But stuck in a sticky taxi-capsule lurching maniacally towards Bombay's ramshackle airport, I was paralysed, embarrassed and, ultimately, humiliated. Everybody must've been looking. You know how alarmed I felt. I was sweating more than is natural. What the hell was going on? I left the hotel seven hours early to make sure of my flight, as I had been warned about over-booking. I took no chances. I panic easily. I suffocate slowly.

The Taj Mahal Intercontinental is a soothing westernised haven. It is set deep inside but far away from the constant Indian pressure and commotion of natives looking to sell wares, drugs, girls. Indians just looking crowd around the perimeter of the magnificent hotel grounds, but they're kept at bay as if by an invisible barrier (but actually by six discreet Indian policeman).

I walk through the lobby past relaxing tourists and emerge into the outside glare and wet heat. Yellow and black taxis are lined up. One is ordered for me. It pulls up. I clamber in. It curves away. Scatters some Indians. Screech! Honk horn. Scythe through crazy traffic. At least the taxi is some protection from the weirdness outside.

Bombay life has no order. It is so disordered it is magnificently disciplined. The city is an out of focus confusion of an antique present, a precious past and a disjointed future. It's a city that never stops. I could grow to love it. All the beauty and all the ugliness the world could ever muster has collapsed into an agonising and challenging heap called Bombay.

In vivid afternoon daylight, with a panicky glance through a taxi window, Bombay is like any major city, except it's been left to rot and crumble. When it falls down no one will rebuild it. Roadside hoarding advertising fluoride toothpaste, the best brand of cigars, mentholyptus sweets and Cadbury's chocolate, mock the charismatic crisis of Bombay with explicit cruelty.

The taxi takes such a ridiculous route to the airport that I begin to think it doesn't exist. I sit in the middle of the small taxi's back seat, lean towards the shoulder of the driver in a futile attempt to disperse the irrational panic in my stomach, and try to look straight ahead. I hold my breath. Sweat. No one likes me.

Every time the taxi stops at traffic lights. At junctions - and that's every three minutes - the beggars descend and collect around the taxi. They've spotted me. It's not pretty. It's not easy to slot into any perspective that I know. It's no use writhing in pity. Who can handle the confusion? Where to direct the hate? Is there any use in getting worked up? Some of the beggars are limbless, a few tragi-comically contorted. There are those who drag bony children; others carry cute babies close to their bodies, half hidden inside their robes. They are not stigmatised. They present themselves naturally.

Sitting in this taxi, willing myself on the plane or in London, because all of a sudden the alienating closeness, the brilliant and nebulous difference of the place, was affecting me. I had nothing I knew to cling on to. The beggars floated towards me, weaving in and out of other cars, and performed their trade. I was lost. The people of India are victims. Do we remember as a matter of courtesy? How do we deal with it? How do we act? Western guilt and ignorance mixes with Indian principles with degenerate illogic. Begging is an Indian tradition; truly a trade.

These thoughts do not ease the emotional uncertainty of the visitor, the tourist. Those Indians who are comfortably off, and those who are richer and snugger than you or I, are enthusiastically quick to dismiss the innumerable beggars that cling to likely targets. They make a racket clicking their tongues. "But these people earn more money than the poor fellows working in the factories," a well off Indian would explain.

Some of the beggars are melodramatic and too well rehearsed in their manner. A lot of them use exactly the same gestures and timing, as if they've been taught in the same drama school. If you presented these with a full set of clothes they would be back the next day in their same carefully torn rags, I am told.

Those Indians who have a good home to live in and more than enough to eat, are quick to point out that the hundred and thousands of natives who sleep in inches of brown dust on the city's pavements do so out of choice. It is another half truth. Given the choice of horribly crowded and unsafe tenement buildings or a pavement where you can stretch and pretend you have privacy, most choose the pavement. It's not the sweetest of choices.

The taxi pulls me through the outer limits of the city; a warped parody of Moss Side. What is worse? The makeshift shacks leaning against each other for support, or the isolated tenements that look like a Hulme housing estate turned inside out - walls bleeding, crumbling, black ? It's here in the ruinous outer limits that the beggars come in droves. Trapped in a turmoil whether I was giving chocolate to the starving but unable to reach hundreds of millions, wondering whether I was supplying a comparative rich racket or what, I end up with my fingernails clenching in my palms giving nothing. Now I feel bad about it, except the whole scene flickers out of sight, desperately out of mind.

I stared straight ahead, leaning over the driver's shoulder, but he was no help. He looked menacing. He had a leathery, gnarled face, a droopy moustache, green teeth, eyelids that could crush an arm. A beggar paws my expensive suede jacket. I stare straight ahead and he curses me. Apparently my head will fall off tomorrow. The driver murmurs to every beggar that signals, weeps, chuckles and sighs. Is he pointing out my callousness? Telling them to go away? Sharing a giggle. Can he understand my confusion? Like a dog sensing fear, he undoubtedly senses my pathetic silliness.

A little child is pushed through the back of the taxi. She whimpers I clutch some rupees in my pocket. But the taxi quickly pulled away. I rub a thumb over my forehead and collect a strip of grime and perspiration. We reach the airport that's set in the midst of this desperate wasteland. From the outside it looks like a row of garages. I'm visibly shaking for reasons I only half know. The taxi meter registers 16 rupees. The bandit driver snarls 60. Outside a horde of eager porters surround the taxi ready for my bags I point to the meter, having been warned that I will be conned. But it's stupid arguing hysterically over 60 rupees (just over £3) for a journey that would cost three times that in London.

I throw the money into his lap. Drag my bags out of the car. Almost fall over. Stumble into the departure lounge Into what I wildly presume will be a bland, anonymous airport land, somewhere clean and comfortable. But the chaos I trip into is no comfort. Where do I go? What do I do? No helpful signs. No obvious people to ask. I spend the next five hours in a state of high panic and paranoia - pacing around, jabbering... Five and a half hours after reaching the airport I get to my plane seat. Smiling Japan Airlines. Escape. I sit back and shut my eyes. Pop music. The Police. India. Taxi drive. Beggars.

What the hell was that all about?

The first time ever I met the Sting... was at The Who gig at Wembley Stadium, and it was also around the time of 'Quadrophenia' and Sting had a seat in the royal box. I was at the bar, absent mindedly sucking some white wine, when I half-recognised an agreeable looking guy who was standing next to me. But he was carrying a small, three year old boy and that threw me off. Then he said something to me. He recognised me. Now I'm not going to pretend that this never happens and when it does that it doesn't cheer me up. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not corrupted.

So this guy with the boy recognised me and introduced himself as Sting. Oh, I thought, unimpressed. He mumbled something about the Ted Nugent article I had written. I'd argued with Nugent about 'Roxanne' - I'd called it, bitterly, polite. and I'd never thought of the Police as being anything other than polite and certainly nothing to do with me. The Sting softly told me that he'd stuck the pertinent part of the piece into his scrapbook.

This appealed to my London-bred conceit. I can be a bit of a show off. Sting and the kid departed in a searing wave of cool. I gulped down the rest of my white wine. It was the first time ever I'd seen his face...really. I began to think about Sting. Within two months it was as if I'd never loved a pop star as much as I loved Sting.

Stars are as much a part of rock'n'roll as the progression and the sex and the poetry and the introversion and the communication; and rock'n'roll would be grimy without them. I'm where I am because of Marc Bolan, so I could never lose the part of my heart that flutters for stars. But the stars have got to be right. I am also where I am because of punk, so I know how destructive stars can be. The power they have can go either way.

The real stars look larger than life end see the world through a personal magnifying glass; with a lot of spite, sadness, drama, defiance. They're not meant to be just pretty pictures. It would be patronising and vulgar to say that there should be no such thing as stars.

In the later part of the '70s there had been no new star who had the sublime glamour, timing, looks, mystery, sensitivity and relevance of The Ideal Star and who also had punk enforced principles. Johnny Lydon isn't a poet and poster star; there are too many shadows.

I tried to make a few of my own: Pete Shelley. Howard Devoto (the closest... so close). Then it began to get desperate: Gary Numan! I soon lost interest. I began to moan about how the true new pop - beat, heart, melody, love and yearning, chilling life studies, dress, style, charm - was not where it belonged, in the charts, on our walls. Bob Geldof is not a real post punk star. Sioux comes closest. Most of the new pop stars who would be are being shoved into the underground. The Industry is still in control. People older than me still run the media.

I was thinking about Sting. And then - 'Message In A Bottle' made my nose bleed, helped shape a new vision - I realised that everything I wanted was already there. The cool. The mask. The soul. The beauty. The music. Those words. The voice. The Star. Sting! More so than the Police. Sting had beaten everyone.

The Police. I hadn't liked the name, the image, their record label, their ages, the smoothness of their music. I hadn't liked their summer success. I was lazy. I didn't look through the gloss. I didn't like Andy Summers, this has-been; and I didn't like the brash and ludicrous Stewart Copeland. But Sting introducing himself, not one bit bothered by all the nasty things I'd written about the group, had swollen my head and made me think.

'Message In A Bottle' was released with its crystal clear communication and startling structure. It clicked. The Police (Sting) were only right as a supergroup. Were the only right supergroup: the tension, aggression, vulnerability, superiority. When they were obscure and struggling, supporting Chelsea, rushing off to America, the Police smacked of insincerity and conspiracy. But the Police as supergroup... were important and, if we only looted, refreshing!

Sting transcended the whole blue and frothy Police myth. He beat back the notion of star as something stupid, to be reviled. He was part of the rock'n'roll tradition, yet the looks, the voice, the intimacy, the intelligence and developing perception contradicted at all. Sting with the Police as star in the charts and on our walls was the fantasy and mocked the fantasy. Sting didn't hide the fact he was smart.

The second time ever I met the Sting... was at ten o'clock in the morning in India. I was jauntily walking through the large lobby of Bombay's Intercontinental hotel, foolishly kidding myself that I'd got used to this decaying and fantastic country. Walking towards me was the Sting. I paused. I tried to pretend I hadn't seen him. It didn't work. Since the last time I'd met Sting I'd elevated him into something special and here l was fooled by the personality that I'd made Sting into. He said hello. Stewart Copeland was with him. He said Hi. I stuttered. They went on for breakfast. After recovering I went in and joined them.

Just as I expected, Stewart Copeland ranted and raved about the charts. Sting sighed, tried to read, stayed mostly silent and restless. Later on, during one of two conversations I have with Sting where I was beginning to look at him as if into a mirror (his will strangely imposes itself yet is quite selfless) we were talking about art and innocence. I ask him about the immense cool of Sting. It cannot be ignored or played down. It is not intimidating, it is merely... spectacular.

He shrugs. The cool makes The Star. His voice is soft and accentless; husky from recent throat trouble. "I don't feel like a star, myself. I just feel like I always did."

But you do build up this coolness. I push.

"I know what the effect is and I know why I choose to do certain things," he muses. "Just cool! I just think about how I look. I care about how I look, and I care about how I present myself. Like this morning when we met, I cared very much what you thought of me at breakfast. Maybe it's vanity. I feel that I'm being watched and I enjoy it, therefore I have a task to do it at all times I mean. It's no great burden on me. If anything I find that it's a pastime, just to maintain that kind of cool..."

I let him know that the second time we met I was nervous. "I know! You moved away! You thought you'd pretend you hadn't seen me!"

The first time we met I was very cynical towards the Police so it was a different thing. The Sting lets some more of his secrets slip. "I went up to you at Wembley with the sole purpose of introducing Sting because I didn't think that Paul Morley had ever thought about Sting and it was a good opportunity to get you to. The excuse was the article about Ted Nugent..."

Bastard! It did have a profound effect on me. "I know! I know! I thought it's put the cat among the pigeons." It worked. What a sucker!

"I know it worked. I tell you how I know it worked because not long after the photographer Pennie Smith came along and said Paul Morley sends his regards, and I thought, 'It's worked. I've got him'.

"It's interesting how personal meetings can effect things. Like I met Elvis Costello once. I was walking down Kensington High Street and this guy leapt out of a car to buy a newspaper. He was in front of me and he's small and he was trying to pass me and he looked up and saw that it was Sting and he's trying to scowl at me, and I just shrugged. And he fucking went off and I thought, 'Well, that's the first meeting, wait until the second one!'

"And there's this thing building up about him hating the Police and I'm just dying for the next meeting, because I'm going to get him. Metaphorically. There is no way I'm going to be drawn, into a slagging match. The next meeting I'll get him to love me." Sting chuckles, presumably plotting again. "And that's the ultimate cruelty."

In the lobby of the hotel the Police troupe is slowly gathering. It is the 26th of March, my twenty third birthday. The day the Police play a special concert in Bombay, the first rock concert in the city since Hawkwind played ten years ago. It's a cultural occasion; a significant event.

Because the Police in Bombay is being covered by a posse of film, TV and journalist people, there is always a wait for everyone to assemble before the pack takes off. "Who's not here," shouts the Police manager Miles Copeland, intensely fluttering as usual. Those that aren't don't answer. Those that are sit on a long seat facing the hotel reception. Elongated drummer Stewart Copeland sits at the end. His brother Miles resigns himself: those that are coming will come when they come.

He sits next to his brother. In many ways Miles is the fourth member of the group. "With the belief they have, I think Stewart and Sting and Andy would have made it in the end, but probably not as big. Me, personally, I'd like to think that part of the success of the Police is up to me!"

His brother Stewart has his say. His American accent is slower "If you like the music then we get credit for that; but if you respect our success then Miles gets a lot of credit for that."

Miles takes off. "The Police is the ultimate dream for everyone, y'know. It happened without hype: the kids discovered the record in America, the record company followed afterwards, but it was the import that was taking off in the charts not the record...

"It is a group that did not get into debt when it started happening, so the first royalties actually went into their pockets. Erm, for me as a manager, they look good, they're co-operative. If you say, 'Hey guys, we need a photograph,' they're all there. They're ideal. Obviously I'm speaking comparatively..."

"The things that make us co-operative," butts in Stewart, "the things that Miles says are good about us, that we're good boys are just little things that you've got to do, extra parts of the job. And we definitely get paid for it, to shake another hand. It's not such a hassle."

There is a three way pull inside the Police. A flamboyant blend of steadiness, tradition, ambition, rivalry, calculation, dedication. Out on the left is the champion Sting. Out on the right are the breathless Copeland brothers. Andy seen-it-all Summers is a placid but influential buffer for this rivalry.

The personality and cool of Sting dominates the group, is the phenomenon. But it is the workings of the Copeland brothers - third brother Ian runs an agency in America which gave them their early dates there - that has pushed the Police into their sturdy, unprecedented position. In many ways it has also given Sting his stardom. But whereas Sting will talk about breaking down barriers, looking to challenge stereotypes, the Copelands talk incessantly about facts and figures and markets and success in the abstract.

A lot of the things that are bad about the Police are rooted in the Copelands' activity. Sting suggests this rivalry is stimulating. I ask Stewart about it.

"We've got different things that drive us, that keep us pushing. His is a kind of sense of rivalry and mine is something different. There are different things that I want out of life. I have a different plan for getting them. And I have different kinds of talents for getting them, different things to put into the ballgame to make it happen for both of us.

"During the three years that we've been working together, Sting and I have evolved a way of working with each other that brings the best out of each other, and it's mostly just out of making it hot for each other."

What has success and the Police given to the drummer?

"The fact that I get to do anything that I want to and if I want to do it really seriously I can shun other responsibilities and get really involved in it. Ordinarily that would not be possible because I would have to earn a daily crust. Things like making movies; such as going to Bombay; such as, well, making records, which is what I'm best at. I mean you can have a pretty good old time and it's been like this for the last year."

Does his immense popularity crush his impetus in any way?

"Oh no, because it's really only different in degree from what I've always known. The feelings I have about my current popularity are pretty much the same as when I first headlined at the Marquee with my own group and you swagger into the club and everyone knows who you are. And it's exactly the same now but to a different degree."

Does he think about responsibilities?

"Sort of. Every now and again. When I'm in a pious mood I do feel that I have to kind of remind myself. I have to kick myself every now and again. I've been doing that regularly up to now and I don't know what good it's done. We're doing this gig in Bombay for charity and so that all seems OK, and I can relax, my karma's alright. "I suppose I'm guilty of a certain amount of vanity... shit!... y'know... you really got to struggle to get where you wanna get and when you get to the top you're bound to want to thumb your nose up at people!"

While we're sitting in the hotel lobby waiting for everyone to gather for the gig at the Rang Bhavan in the very centre of Bombay, I'm wondering - why India?

Sting said it was about challenge, adventure, initiative. Then he'd talked about Miles Copeland and his 'vision', a long term project to introduce rock'n'roll into countries such as India with a view to 'westernising' such places. Is he serious? Sting had said Miles had "a sort of right wing drive."

But when I asked Sting how he related to his manager's apparently half-political ambition, he was cautious, "I'm into his energy. I'm enjoying the adventure and Miles isn't in charge by any means. We will argue about things... Miles' energy and Miles' ideas, whatever the end is, are useable. There is no Police spokesman. I speak for myself and him for himself. I think he's probably one of the most dynamic managers in rock and roll, he really digs it, he thinks of great things to do... But he does have this idea about Russia. All Americans are frightened of Russia, and I'm sure it's the other way round. Miles' idea is that the world is in two camps and that there is a political solution to the world. I don't believe that. I play along with it... I think the solution needs to be more spiritual..."

Later I tell Miles what Sting has said. I ask him about introducing western and capitalist values into the eastern world. His deceptive face breaks into a stiff smile and he answers as if addressing some distant persons, half preaching, almost reciting, drawling like a wet Jimmy Carter.

"I believe in the word capitalism in a different way to maybe how some English people would use the term. In England the word means oppression and everything like that. To me it means freedom of the individual, and to me the great thing about England and America and our western way of society is that the individual can pretty well make up his own mind, at least compared to other countries - i.e. Russia.

"I find socialism oppressive because I don't believe The People when they start talking about The People; they really mean a few people dominating everybody else in the name of The People'.

"Erm, I grew up in the political life. My father (a top man in the CIA) was involved in various aspects of politics and the way governments run and all that, so I obviously have an interest in it. I grew up in a lot of exotic places and as a young kid I met Nasser and I hob-nobbed with rulers of various countries. But I'm not trying to inject politics into what I'm doing in music. But the fact is if western music gets played in Russia and gets played in India and gets played in China it tends to liberate all those individuals to a degree that it's revolutionary music. It's kids standing up for themselves.

"Look at England. Music is used as a form for changing society; it's a revolutionary force and our society has the freedom to do that and it can influence events. In the '70s a lot of pop stars altered the course of America in the war with Vietnam. But if all the Russians and all the Chinese and all the Indians get into western music it means really that they get into western culture, which means they become oriented towards the west as opposed to the east. But I did not get into this business to do that. I'm not playing India because I want to change India. I'm just saying maybe that's a side-effect that in the end is a good thing. I happen to believe in the values of our western society as opposed to anything else that is being offered. I don't pretend we're perfect, but we certainly are better. Somebody like me is free to do what I want to do in England. But I wouldn't be able to operate like this if I was in Russia. So I have to believe in the values of our society.

"But the Police are not in India for any ulterior motive on my part. We're having a good time! It's fun! It's a new culture! It's exciting. It keeps the band fresh. They're playing places nobody else has. We're doing something good I think. All the Indians are real excited that at last all these rock groups they hear about are gonna come over and they're gonna get a chance to see what it's about."

"Let's go!" Miles Copeland commands loudly and the huge white limousine which is totally incongruous amongst all the tiny vehicles in India, eases away from the hotel and heads for the open air theatre where the gig is to be. I'm in the back of the car with the two Copelands. Andy Summers is in the front. Sting is lost. The two Copelands are chattering on about the endless tapes of conversations and idle chitchat that Miles is building up from the whole tour. "I'm catching all those little moments that in ten years from now when they do the Police story, syndicated all over the world, I'll have all these little bits." Miles grins like a little boy. Stewart begins, "We're laying the foundation..." and Miles completes, "...for the Police Tapes!"

But the atmosphere of happy tourists cruising along Bombay's early evening streets soon comes to a horrific end. "Oh my God," groans Miles loudly. The car has pulled up at some traffic fights. An armless girl beggar has presented herself at the car window. "Shit!" spits Stewart. "Can you imagine showing your deformities to everyone?" We all try to stare away. No one knows what to say. "Oh God," Miles repeats. The car moves off. "But if you give them money you're actually encouraging it, and I think it's not to be encouraged... "Where do you draw the line?" wonders a shaken Andy Summers. "Where do you stop. You can't give it to one and then leave seven million out..."

The incident is soon forgotten. Deep down everyone needs consoling. The car pulls up outside the neat open air theatre and Miles is back to his good self. Two hours before the concert and there are already queues for the sell-out concert. Three and a half thousand tickets have been sold. He looks gratefully at the queue which is breaking up and beginning to surround the car. "I see that there are a few foreigners here come to check the stars."

The third time ever I met the Sting was on a high balcony of the Taj Mahal Intercontinental Hotel and by now we must know that Sting knows what he's doing. But how. Overlooking the Arabian Sea and the majestic Gateway to India, Sting and I talk about Joy Division. Sting may like the group - "The LP blew me away" - but he also knows full well that they're my favourite group. It's a calculated move for us to talk about them immediately, yet still honest. It's part of that Cool. In the lobby prior to the Police pack going off on some outing into the Bombay maze, we arrange when we'll do the interview, when we'll talk about Sting and Pop, and I say that I feel slightly silly discussing the pop phenomenon in Bombay. "Oh no," Sting shakes his head. "Pop is important."

Have you always loved pop?

"I always hated rock in my teens. From about 15 to 25 I stopped listening to it. But I loved the '60s thing and the whole heavy punk thing."

Is it the idea of The Star that interests you in the Ray Davies, John Lennon tradition and not the Plant, Gillan sort of macho thing, and you want to find new ways of adding to that tradition because of what it's given you?

"Yeah, I think we add... I think the whole school of pop and rock groups take their inspiration from the generation before the last one. We hate the groups from the last generation and so we take our inspiration from somewhere else, and carry on from those people. Or maybe we're just trying to get as far as they did. The Beatles are definitely the blueprint for almost any group."

Is that an old fashioned thing to say?

"It's true, whether it's old fashioned or not, because they did it. They did everything. They did it long before we did. The whole perpetuation of the myth and the idol and the star thing, they had it..."

And tried to do something strongly, within that...

"Yeah, I think The Beatles changed the shape of history."

So Pop is important?

"Oh, it's vitally important. I mean, being English from the age of five onwards I've been as interested in who's at the top of the charts as I have been in which Prime Minister or government has been running my life. I think England is probably the only country in the world where it's that important. I don't think America cares that much about it. England as a community is very pop orientated. I think it's the folk music, the folk culture of our time. People just take it seriously.

I can come close to blows over it. I can giggle at its silliness. And here I am in the middle of Bombay trying to discover, whether one of the biggest pop stars in the world is 'serious' or not. Well, you can look at it objectively and say, 'God, this is a load of crap. This is a load of noises on a piece of plastic'. But there's something about the music that is indefinable, a magic to it that you can't laugh at."

But now you are what you are it's important that you resist becoming aloof.

"Well, we've got a good start. A lot of groups have an image that is very hard to adhere to, like the stony-faced idol who can never be approached. I think Gary Numan has this, and it looks great at times, but how long can you keep it up? It's not long before people are sick of it. We get up on stage end we laugh a lot and we tell jokes and we banter with the audience, and I feel very natural. I feel very ordinary in fact. I think that will stay longer than the cold unapproachable icon. That's attractive for a short time - unless it changes all the time, like with Bowie, which is fascinating, it's a work of art. But there's a lot of pressure on him. He can do it because he's a very clever man. We don't have that problem. We're just ourselves."

How does your work in films move into this Sting as Star angle?

"I try and keep it very separate now. I've been offered lots of movies lately where the two worlds merge. I was offered a film by Francis Ford Coppola to play the singer in the film, the lead, and it was very attractive. The pedigree of the film was impeccable, but reading the script it was like the stereotype rock star with stereotype rock star problems, which had nothing to do with me. I find that too dangerous an area to work in. Too much a risk. The goal at the end of the movie was not worth the risk. What I would get out of working in that movie wouldn't be worth the price of failing in it."

What inputs went into the Quadrophenia mod? The character was very enigmatic; lots of secrets in there.

"That performance was... me, actually. Definitely part of me and very easy to do. I'm not an 'actor'; looking good on screen is just a matter of intelligence. I was lucky in that film because I was in it just long enough to create a big impression, and not long enough to blow it. It was perfect. The Police did a lot for that movie actually. The week it came out in England we were number one. I know for a fact they waited until the Police had toured Australia before they released it there."

How do you relate the Police Sting and the film Sting: do you feel there's a common goal?

"Yeah, I suppose so. I think Sting is separate from the Police."

That separation has been a seductive development.

"Yeah... I've developed... I think the other two are developing their own personas. I'm standing back a lot now and letting the other two take the limelight, because there was a sort of imbalance - and I don't apologise for that. I was the singer. But I'd like my career to be a long one and I don't really want to stay just a rock'n'roll singer. I think there are more graceful ways of growing old. And acting is one that appeals to me. I don't think I would go back to teaching."

You taught for two years. Was that a good apprenticeship for what you're doing now?

"Yeah, learning to stand up in front of people and not being an arsehole, although I might seem to be one. Self-confidence in front of people. Entertaining, I suppose. I think the phenomenon in the classroom isn't teaching, it's learning. I think what you have to do is create an atmosphere where people can feel happy and want to learn things, and I think the rock'n'roll thing is similar. You create an atmosphere where people can let themselves go, get worked up if you like. It's a sort of ritualised release. We get back to the placebo thing: wouldn't they be better off on the streets, bringing down the government, killing off old ladies? I don't know. Music made me give up teaching."

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