We have to clear the engine room first. We have to clear Charlie first. If he's willing, I think the rest of us will be.

I usually wait for a phone call from Mick, which is usually about a year after the tour finishes. He'll go, Shouldn't we be doing something? And I'll say, OK, let's get together, you know.

The doctors said that if I give up smoking now I can nip it in the bud - I still have powerful lungs. But they say if I smoke for another year, I could get emphysema and - boom - my lungs could collapse. When they did the scan on my lungs they also did my liver and kidneys and said they are in remarkably good shape for someone who has put what I've put through them.

In the old days I would start with about eight pints of Guinness then go on to the vodka, a couple of bottles of that. Then go on to Sambuca, a bottle of that. And that was every day... It started with the Faces.... Then Keith, he was a great drinking partner of mine and Rod was too. Basically everybody I met was a drinker.

Mick is very supportive. He didn't threaten me at all. There were stories that I was going to be kicked out of the Stones. That's all bollocks. He just came as a friend and said, Ronnie, you can't just have one can you? Please. I love you. Help yourself. 

I still wear my little medallion. I say my Serenity Prayer every day. But I still find it very hard to walk past an open bar. Every day is a challenge. I just don't like to be surrounded by the booze because it's too tempting... Alcoholism runs in my family. It's in my blood. My grandparents, my parents, my brothers, everybody in my family is an alcoholic. So I'm setting a new trend here and it's bloody hard work. Everybody says I would be dead if I'd carried on drinking.

It looks as if the Stones are starting in the next month or so... Originally we weren't even thinking of starting until October.

On the road we all have our little routines. Keith lives like he is at home - same music, books. Mick is always working - e-mailing, on the phone. We live in a bubble. Getting on the plane is like getting on the Tube to go to work. 

Charlie: I'd had a lump in my neck for two or three years. It was diagnosed as benign but then the doctor took it out, found it was cancerous and then they found it in my left tonsil, too. I lay there thinking, Well, normally you die... When I first found out about the cancer, I literally went to bed and cried. I thought that was it, that I'd only have another three months. 

Keith: As Charlie put it, One minute I'm standing at Ronnie Scott's getting a standing ovation and the next minute I'm on a marble slab.

We had OK'd the tour. (Charlie) was straight up about it: The doctor says I have a 90% chance of being completely cured. I would have been in such a state. If Charlie had said, I can't do this tour, I've faced mortality, we would have had to change our minds. No one pressured him. But the treatments couldn't have been easy. I kept worrying: Is he eating? I'm like a nanny. 

It started in June last year, I went to Mick's house in France, and we sat around. And at the time Charlie was pretty ill, and we didn't know, and we were looking at each other across the couches going, Look, this is it. I go, Mick, you're on drums and I'll double on bass. In a way, we had to strip it down, and as it went along we realized that we had something going there and so we'd cut it all in Mick's house. There was a point I'm sure where he wanted to kick us out. But as I said to Mick, Listen, once upon a time, we cut a record in the South of France in my house, and it's called Exile On Main Street, and now it's your turn. 

I didn't even want the family to come in and see me. The best way - for me at any rate - was to be left alone. Totally alone. Like a dog that's been hurt... You go in there and you're terrified. All the machines, it's like space age stuff. The surgeons and nurses literally have your life in their hands.

I didn't think of the Rolling Stones at all. Mick rang a few times: You have to get well. Don't worry about us. I was sorry not to be there when Mick and Keith were writing. In a way, it was fortuitous, because they were on their own. It was a lot of fun for them, to be together. 

I write songs a lot with different people. I write a lot of stuff with Dave, I write a lot of stuff with Keith, and I write a lot of stuff on my own. There's hundreds of different ways of writing songs within that formula. I just spent two weeks writing songs with Keith and some are songs where I'm just there on my own and Keith walks in and plays the bass on what I've written. And some days it's the reverse, I go in and play the piano on something he's written. Dave and I are very concentrated and we're quite detailed. We force one another to finish everything. We like to do our work and get it done.

Mick: What it really was is, you know, Keith and I started doing a lot of stuff just on our own, and then we were just having a laugh with a lot of it. I'd already written quite a lot of material, and Keith had written some, so it wasn't like we start from nothing... Keith was very supportive of my songwriting, guitar-playing, bass-playing, drumming. 

We were in such a confined space - some of it was in France, some of it in the Caribbean - without loads of hangers-on. There was nowhere to hide. Is it good? Is is not good? Then bung it out the window. There were no three-hour blues jams. There wasn't time. 

Keith: (Charlie's illness) pulled (Mick and I) together quicker than I would have expected. Because the man does like to keep his distances. On the basic level of putting songs together, it made us play together more, on guitars and piano. Mick, as a guitar player, has finally gotten there... He's also a good drummer - not in a technical sense. But he's got a great beat, good feel... 

It was all built on two acoustic guitars, and in such a sparse and stripped-down way that if you tried to elaborate on it later you'd lose the whole essence of it. 

Keith and I have been writing lots of songs for the new Rolling Stones album. We haven't booked the tour yet and when we do we'll let you know, but there will definitely be another one... We just started (writing), and it will be out sometime next year. We'll start recording in November. It should be good. I've been writing the last month for that, and I'm quite excited by what I've got so far.

I don't know who's going to be ready yet - (the new) Wembley Stadium or the Rolling Stones. Charlie's a lot better. He's had all his treatments and he's been pronounced sort of free and clear of everything, so we're very pleased about that. And Keith and I have been writing new material for the Stones' new album. I don't know when the Stones will actually tour, but I suspect we'll do the album and then we'll do a tour.

I think the excitement that drew me to this group in the beginning is the same excitement that draws me to it now.

I've always been a rather career-minded person and any vague resemblance of my life to a playboy's is merely coincidental.

I went back (to the hospital after it was discovered there were cancerous cell on the lump that was removed) for all the other stuff. And then another operation to take the lymph nodes and all of that out. And then (a check up) every week, every month, every year... And now it's 5 years it's cleared.

I don't think that, between us, there was any doubt that Charlie would beat (cancer). I wondered how long and debilitating it might be, which Charlie answered in spades when he came back. He looked exactly the same, like he hadn't done anything more than comb his hair and puit a suit on... When he came in, we were still running down songs, rehearsing. You don't usually go into fifth gear in rehearsal. You lay back a little. But Charlie came in as if to prove I'm back. He played every rehearsal like a show. 

I was very frightened. Mick and Keith were getting on very well and Mick was mucking about on the drums. What they were doing was very good and I felt, Crikey, have I got anything to give? and I was very scared.

Charlie: (Mick and Keith are) getting on very well at the moment. I think it was the way this record was done - simply. Even when I came back, it was simple. For a while it was just the three of us. 

Mick: We did this record with minimal technology, just suitcases of computers. I didn't want to go into a 
massive glass-and-stone $10 million studio with all the bells and whistles. All that technology can change the way you play. We pared it down, and the intimacy worked... (I)t was a better vibe than last time but you never know why that is. We weren't only in my house in France but wherever we were, yes it was (kept simple). We were in places where there wasn't a lot of distraction... so we just got on and did what we did with this small group of people and we were very focused. 

Keith: We kicked off this album on a small scale and we kept it like that all the way through. There's nobody on it except the band. This album said, Don't elaborate on me. Make me small and I'll give you a big one.