Just over a year later we caught up with Stewart again, and got the lowdown on the factors that led to the band’s split way back in 1986.

“It was a creative difference, an honest dispute on both sides. It was very simple. Sting is a master songwriter, and an incredible producer and arranger. He writes a song, and he doesn’t just stop there, he completes the song in his mind, the same way that Mozart did or any other composer in any other era. But he’s a member of a group, which means he has to take the song to the band and have it thrashed up by his bandmates and compromise his initial vision. He became less and less patient with that, understandably, and we had eight good years and five albums of him making these compromises, but eventually he couldn’t take it any more. We know all this now, but at the time we weren’t so aware and articulating these clear differences so dispassionately, so there was a lot of tension.”