Packing for a tour is at once a skill and an expression of one’s personality. "Minimalist packing" is a discipline that enforces an enlightening distinction between the essential and ephemeral among one’s possessions.

This time I opt for "luxurious minimalism" - no spare clothes or toiletries, but a CD player with 30 Cds and a selection of paperbacks. The former will serve to make me the focus of the inevitable all-night hotel tour sessions. The latter will pass time on the bus and, if chosen correctly, will impress any journalists who we invite along.

Only on boarding the train to Derby and almost decapitating an unsuspecting pensioner with Tom Wait’s entire back catalogue do I realise the extent of my over-packing. Too late now.

While the others adjourn to shower, shave and so on, I prepare for tonight’s gig in my usual way - I sit in the pub nearest the venue anonymously supping and listening to the fans chatting. It is my only chance to find out what the people who follow our band are actually like.

Tonight, unusually, I am clocked. A fella tells me he has bought "everything we’ve done". Together we calculate that (at a personal profit of 8p per CD), he has, effectively, over the last eight years, bought me a pint. He buys me another one anyway.

Gradually the pub empties as the Billy Bunters drift off to the gig. I hand around for another pint, mainly to worry Phil, who is our new manager, and an inveterate worrier. I arrive 10 minutes late only to discover the others "have just left the hotel". Great.

Just time to open a bottle of Sainsbury’s pink champagne (I get 2 bottles on the rider) before they all arrive. We bounce straight onto stage and into Don’t Marry Her. Here we go again...

The morning after the first gig. The unspoken consensus is to quote Homer (no, not the Greek one) "good... but not great". Personally, I am elated. Only a few months ago I was whistling Rotterdam to myself and a peach Schnapps in Gran Canaria, safe in the knowledge that only one other person in the world knew the song (my honey-throated co-writer Paul). Last night I saw 2 000 people singing it, word-for-word, straight back at me. One of the (few) unfortunate things about writing a hit song is that you have to relinquish it for ever. To be ever heard whistling or singing it in public again would be unspeakably naff. So goodbye Rotterdam.

With the first gig under our collective proverbial belt, mood on the tour bus is relaxed. Flicking through an itinerary, I note that tonight’s hotel is rated as "first class" as opposed to last night’s "superior tourist" and tomorrow’s "moderate tourist class". For the uninitiated, here is a rough translation:

Moderate tourist class: bar closes at 1am, no hot food at night, no satellite TV, tea-making facilities in room.

Superior tourist class: bar closes at management discretion, mini-bars in rooms, satellite TV (four pay channels with porn on 2 and 4).

First class: 24-hour room service, 24-hour bar, satellite TV with child-proof porn channels (usually 26 and 27).

Superior first class: same as "first class", but with a bar named after an author and no porn channels.

The absolutely unmistakable mark of a truly first class hotel, though, is the presence of both "open" and "close door" buttons in the lift. So if a hotel has lifts with simply the floor numbers and an alarm button, avoid it like the plague, it’s probably "inferior economy class". Mind you, it will have "tea making facilities in room".

"Days off" tend to be much harder on mind, body and liver than "days on". Today you can take that and double it; Blue Is The Colour has entered the charts at number one. I read somewhere that Japanese businessmen take out "hole-in-one" insurance to cover the cost of buying everyone in the club, company and local postal area a celebratory drink. By the end of today I’m sure manager Phil is wishing he’d considered "number one" insurance.

Celebrations begin modestly with half a dozen bottles of champagne in the hotel. They become more lively with another dozen on the bus. Jacqui buys a pumpkin and carves it into an uncanny resemblance of Mick Hucknall (number one; deposed). Rockets are fired on to the M6.

At the "superior first class" hotel in Southampton, Phil orders another dozen bottles. Someone spots a Louis XIII cognac costing £50 a shot. Everyone gets one and necks it straight down. The party moves outside - rockets are fired from empty champagne bottles (mainly at unfortunate stick-man Dave Stead). The police are called - (only to request tickets for the gig ("for our sisters"). In the morning, everybody gets up early to go out on the sniff for designer gear.

So, The Beautiful South are number one. Good news - especially for Messrs Moet & Chandon, Louis XIII and Paul Smith. Cheers!

Today is spent clothes shopping with Steady (drums) and Tommy (T-shirts). I need Steady for his credit card, but I need Tommy for his fashion sense. Many’s the time I’ve plucked a jacket from the rack eyes gleaming, only to replace it after a barely perceptible narrowing of the eyes or shake of the head. This supreme arbiter of fashion rarely spends much himself. He does tend to walk out of shops better dressed than he walked in, but with old garments mysteriously absent. Many a shoe shop assistant has been puzzled to find a pair of impeccably fashionable, but unserviceably odorous, Adidas Tobuccoes in the middle of his Timberland bootrack. Tommy always goes well-shod. Quite reasonably, he figures that he works hard for his money and Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani don’t really need a slice of it.

Nothing is more annoying than those whining Oscar acceptance speeches which register gratitude, in gut-clenchingly encyclopaedic detail, to all those, from their psychiatrist’s dog to their dog’s psychiatrist "without whom" some piece of mindless crap could not have been slung together. Still.

This tour is currently employing 44 people (musicians, technicians, merchandisers, drivers, caterers). None works harder than Monty, our roadie, with whom I am now sharing a rare pre-gig snifter in a Southampton pub. Monty’s day begins at 9.00am ("load-in") leaving only 7 hours party time. (Monty elects not to sleep on tour). Monty spends the day setting up and testing all the gear and running errands. During the gig he has to tune guitars, pour out drinks and, if necessary, run on stage in traditional roadie semi-erect posture and fix something.

He has to support a wife, four kids and enough bad habits to fill a Trappists’ launderette. A grizzled veteran, this foot soldier goes into daily battle with a twinkle in his eye and a catchphrase ("it’s a business doing pleasure with you", "what’s holding up the delay") on his lips. Let us salute him now.