“Hang on, I need two seconds on my own,” interrupts Fun Lovin’ Criminal Huey Morgan. “I have to buy a piece of weed here. I’m just going into this drug spot. Hold on a second.”

The phone line crackles slightly, and I hear the muffled murmur of low voices and rustling pockets.

The King Of New York is strolling about his fiefdom, “chillin’” during a five-day hiatus before the Criminals descend upon the UK and Ireland for a tour that culminates with a whopping three-night headliner at Dublin’s Olympia. A few minutes later, Huey re-emerges on the line.

“You haven’t lived if you haven’t seen us live,” Huey assures. “I’d better be good, though, I’m on probation still. Can I get some bamboo please?”

Er, sorry?

“Oh, nothin’. I’m just getting some rolling papers.”

Oh. Okay.

With a Best Of on the shelves, a tour underway and the guts of a new album bubbling up in the studio, our Huey has been grabbing the party bull by its proverbial horns, no more evidently than at the MTV awards in Barcelona where he manned the meet-and-greet mic on the red carpet.

“I’ve never seen so many people take themselves so seriously in all my life,” he laughs. “Man, I thought California was weird. But that was sooo strange. It was boring as hell! We were trying to have a good time wherever we went, but everybody there was just whinging. Last year was cool, though. They had it goin’ off back then. And that was in Frankfurt, man. Of all places! You’d figure it’d be like a big ol’ party and stuff but everybody was wiggin’ out, being real important y’know? Like the Eminems and the Puffys didn’t wanna mingle with any of the people. There were some other bands there who were so in their own ass. It was terrible. We had fun though. We brought out a case of beer on to the red carpet.”

Huey is no stranger to the trappings of super-fame, recalling a particular evening at the house of Versace.

“A few years ago we were in Milan and Donatella invited us over to her house, so, naturally, we went over. We walked into this little room and all these people were hanging out, people like Michael Stipe and Madonna. It was a little bit over the top. There were the guys from Massive Attack and a couple of Spice Girls thrown in for good measure. There was a lot of that standing-around-being-cool-thing, though.”

Having scored a quarter and reminisced over past soirees, how will Huey be celebrating the festivities this Christmas season?

"My ideal Christmas would probably be in New York. Me and my friends would have a little thing at my house. We'd have a fire ’n everything – very Christmassy. We’d sing yuletide carols infront of the fire and I have a roof deck so we could go up there and enjoy the Christmas stars. Food-wise, I’d probably have to say pizza. Is it turkey and cranberry pizza? No, no. That’s a little too much trouble. I don’t want people slaving in the kitchen all day. With a pizza, it’ll be delivered, we can throw the box out and we’re done. I eat more pizza than the average man. What will we be guzzling? Well, everybody likes eggnog, so we just spike ours with Jameson!

“I’m not really into getting gifts, I like giving them though – a lot of the girls get those light blue Tiffany boxes [ooer! – Ed]. I just hope I don’t find coal in my stocking,” he adds ruefully. “I haven’t been the best boy in the world this year.”

Following the aforementioned dates in The Olympia, the Criminals are set to embark upon a monster recording session.

“After we do the tour, we’ll be finishing up the new record so that’s gonna be real interesting,” he says. “It’s coming along swimmingly, as they say. It’s got a few rock ’n’ roll songs on there that I think people are going to be interested in hearing. There’s a lot of rock and roll out there that’s pretty soft, y’know?”

But the Criminals were never really that heavy?

“Well here and there, if you listen to the old stuff – we’ve had our moments. We touch on the heavy stuff once in a while,” he assures. “And remember, we’re like Daddys too to a lot of these guys, like Papa Roach and all that. The laid back side is always going to be evident in the music, but what we’re getting in to now is more of the hard rock stuff. We don’t rule anything out, y’see? I think, a lot of the time when people start bands, they know exactly what they want to do. When we started we had no idea at all what we wanted to do, so it kinda left us open to try different things.

“Music’s the food of life. You can find good stuff in any genre,” he enthuses. “I can’t really say I’m down with the techno, but…”