"WOULD IT be alright if I gave it back? Would that make it OK?"

Nope.

"I'll make it up to you."

"It's much too late for that."

"Oh God, there goes the street credibility . . . "

You can say that again.

"My brother Neil and I were both awarded the OBE about three days ago in New Zealand," explains Tim Finn, looking pleased, slightly embarrassed and very bemused. "It's the New Zealand contingent of public honours, and obviously our profile over there is immensely high and we've been around for years and so somebody in parliament, who probably was into Split Enz, decided, 'oh, we'll give the Finn boys a run . . .' For Mum and Dad obviously it's a class act.

"Look what it did for Bob Geldof though. It's a bit of a worry."

Tim Finn is a regular visitor to Dublin, and it was during one of these visits in late 1991 that his brief but very successful tenancy with Crowded House came to an abrupt end. It was the same day Crowded House were scheduled to be interviewed for Hot Press. The two facts are, allegedly, entirely unconnected.

"There were no bad feelings but there was some relief for me when we decided to call it quits," he muses now. "It could have been like a project for me - Crowded House with Tim Finn - because they were always my favourite band and I didn't want to tamper with their chemistry at all. The last thing I wanted was to mess it up.

"I think afterwards they felt happier themselves as well, by having had the contrast of having me in the group, who was not just a side man but was really another strong presence. They realised what they really valued about the three of them, I think. And vice versa; I realised what I wanted to do even more clearly.

"There's nothing abhorrent to me about being in a band - I've never been a solo artist because I want to be the boss - but at the same time all the delicate balancing of ego that go on and all the compromises, just being aware of people all the time and being with them twenty-four hours a day . . . For me the band was Split Enz and I don't need another one in my life. It suits me better to be more fluid and mobile and just move around different groups of people."

After his departure from Crowded House, Tim Finn decided to abandon rock and roll mode for a while.

"I went to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney. They run these meditation retreats out there - I'd heard about it through a friend. She never told me very much about it but she intrigued me because she said it's the hardest thing and the best thing she's ever done. I liked the sound of that because I wanted to experience something that was very different from being on the road and all the hubbub and chaos of that.

"It's run by Buddhists, but it doesn't require you to accept the dogma or the teaching of that philosophy. You can do the technique and just be silent for ten days. It's an amazing thing to not talk. If you want to, you can go and ask questions during your lunch break and might talk for five minutes with somebody. I was sharing a room with three other guys, and we were all sleeping on bunks - it was like the antithesis of the rock and roll tour. They were telling me on the last day, when we were speaking, that I'd been talking and shouting in my sleep every night, so it was coming out anyway.

"It was great, really refreshed me and cleared my head out," he adds. "It's not especially so mystical, it's quite a scientific thing and very rigorous. You're observing yourself and you get angry and frustrated and bored - you go through the whole gamut. There's no bliss in it really. The idea is not to look for bliss or contentment. It's very different to anything else one does.

"After that, the songs just really started to come through for the next month or six weeks, and then the process of making a record started. It was a perfect way of getting back to myself after Crowded House really."

The record in question is Tim Finn's excellent new solo album, Before And After. In addition to a couple of Neil/Tim collaborations it features songs co-written by Richard Thompson, Liam O'Maonlai and Andy White and, because of Tim's confessed tendency to "wander a fair bit", an extensive list of producers.

"I did a few tracks in London, a few here in Dublin, and then took tapes home to Melbourne to my own studio and actually went to LA as well. I didn't set out with that plan, it just followed its own course, but luckily the record company was into it and it seemed to be getting better so they kept signing the cheques. It hung together. There's a flow to it, a rhythmic undercurrent to the sound which is really the only thing I set out wanting to do, to have songs that flowed one to the other. I think that's part of what holds it together.

"Richard Thompson and I have got the same manager and same record company so it was inevitable there'd be some collusion there. He had this beautiful melody for a film soundtrack he was doing and it sounded like it would suit my voice, so I asked him if I could turn it into a song," (which subsequently became the first single from the album, 'Persuasion'). "That was really quite a spontaneous thing.

"Working with the Flowers here in Dublin, Liam and myself and Andy White just became like a gang and went out carousing and playing music. Andy let me play the drums for him at a couple of gigs. I'm not a drummer, but I figured no-one in Dublin will know who I am and so they won't be judging me, they'll just be thinking 'who's that eejit up there?' I was eternally grateful because I'm a closet drummer from way back," he laughs.

"We wrote "Many's The Time" after we went out one night to a strange little disco called Mozarts and they threw us out because we weren't dressed right. Then they realised who Liam was and they were all over us, gave us pints of Guinness and fruit cocktails with little umbrellas, and there we were just laughing at the situation."

Tim's familiarity with distinctly non-antipodean terms like "eejit", and his decision to spend time recording and relaxing in Dublin, stems from the fact that his mother possessed the good sense to be born in Ireland.

"I knew I was going to feel at home and identify with the people," he explains. "It was better than I'd hoped for in the sense of instantly feeling relaxed, and there being something very familiar about it. At home, we used to have a joke going with mum saying 'you can't go over to Ireland unless you take me with you,' so Neil and myself brought my mum and dad over last year.

"We took them on a little holiday, one thing led to another and we went down to the ring of Kerry and Dingle and found all these relatives in Doneraile in Cork and had the big night there with the relatives in the pub singing songs and feeling very connected. I just knew that I wanted to stay here again and work here again. When it goes easily like that, you might as well just follow it.

"I've got a house in Melbourne and I've got my studio there and I work there and I live there some of the time. It's a great town, very cosmopolitan and you've got this vast range of cultures but I'm not there that much. Last year I was there for about three or four months out of the twelve."

The Crowded House/Tim Finn affair is over, but it's left behind a crop of wonderful songs and the knowledge that, whatever the difficulties involved in a full-time alliance, the Finn brothers make a wonderful occasional songwriting partnership.

"Now we realise we can do it we'll get back to it at some point. We wrote fourteen songs in two weeks prior to Woodface. We used eight on that album, two on Before And After. Neil used one on the new Crowded House record, so gradually we're getting through them. That and Woodface are the only results worth worrying about from that whole episode. And it was good for me and Neil to have a big hit single ('Weather With You') together. Mum was relieved, she could relax for about twelve months because our destinies were entwined for once."

"I know we are close. Like all families there's a lot that's left unsaid and we find it hard sometimes to express our anger and frustration with each other, that's the way we were brought up and I think Ireland's a bit like that - you keep it to yourself. Mum was a very Irish mother, but there was this bubbling cauldron underneath that could explode at the most weird moments. We like each other a lot and we always have a good time when we're together.

"One of our sisters lives on a farm, and she has a big wool-shed party every two years or so. They're quite legendary, all the farmers from miles around come and Neil and I play. That's when we really get off, that's when we really feel connected to our roots and ourselves, when we're performing in that sort of environment, very low key and low tech."

Tim Finn, plus knighthood, hopes to be back getting thrown out of Dublin nightclubs soon.

At least now I know I'm in good company.