Although it is six years since Roland, who enjoyed a string of international hits with FYC including She Drives Me Crazy and Good Thing, was in the charts, the 40-year-old star feels his self-titled debut solo album is the completion of unfinished business.

"I felt the Fine Young Cannibals did not finish. We were supposed to do a third album but we just could not get it together," he says.
"I always felt like something had been left unfinished. So this record is like completing my work with the Cannibals as well as branching out into something new."

Yet Roland reveals that it was the international success of his former band which eventually sounded its death knell.

"We had such success with our second album that this mentality developed that the next album had to sell twice as many copies or else it would be a failure.

"So instead of concentrating on writing songs we started thinking about making hits all the time. I think that is what eventually killed the Cannibals.

However, the band remained on amicable terms and there was no high profile public falling out.

"The Cannibals didn't really go out with a bang. We had one single called The Flame in 1996. That was really our swansong. In reality the group had been over a good few years before, we just wouldn't admit it," says Roland. "Eventually we stopped functioning."