We talk to Stereophonics frontman Kelly Jones

“The songs we’re writing now and the ones off the new album are going to be around for a while,” he says on the phone from Ibiza, where the band’s drummer Javier Weyler is getting married in the morning.

“When you follow up a greatest hits album you tend to edit yourself a bit harder and think a bit differently about your new songs, which is why we put the vocals to the fore and beefed up the backing for (new album) Keep Calm and Carry On.

“They’d been on at us for years to do a greatest hits, and I think Decade in the Sun showed how different the songs from each album were, so you’re always progressing and evolving.

“That rounded up the first 10 years – here’s to the next!”

Having duly celebrated Javier’s nuptials, the band are heading back to these shores to play the Bournemouth International Centre on Tuesday, two days before Kelly’s 36th birthday, as a warm-up for a massive homecoming show at the new Cardiff City Stadium and a banner slot at the T in the Park festival.

“We’ve been hard at it since we played the first leg of the British tour back in March.

“We’re just back from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia so it’s sounding really good.”

Ah, yes, Singapore, scene of the infamous flip-flop incident.

At least I thought it was an infamous incident, having seen a couple of tabloid newspaper reports about Stereophonics storming off stage after Kelly was hit by a flip-flop thrown from the crowd.

But it turns out that it wasn’t that big a deal from where Kelly was standing.

“Nobody’s asked me about it, I didn’t know it had made the papers back here.

“All it was, it was the last song before the encore, and I saw something come flying out of the crowd and hit the mic stand, and the mic hit my teeth, which hurt.

“I stopped, we went off while they found out what it was …then we came back on and played the encore.

“When you’re in bands you get all sorts of things thrown on stage, it’s just one of those things.

“It wasn’t a particularly raucous crowd, there was no malice. It was just a bunch of drunk British people in a foreign land – you know what they’re like!”

I wonder what the 12-year-old Kelly would have thought if he’d known, when he first picked up a guitar at home in the tiny mining village of Cwmaman, that a few years later he’d be flying all over the world playing to thousands of people.

“I don’t know about flying all over the world – when you grow up surrounded by four mountains you don’t think there’s much of anything beyond that!

“I never did this for the fame or the money or anything like that, it was just because it was a good thing to do, I always wanted to write songs and it’s been like that ever since.

“Me and Richard (Jones, bassist, no relation) have been friends since we were three years old, and Stuart (Cable, the band’s original drummer, with whom they parted company in 2003) lived seven doors down.

“So I’d be in my house practising, and could hear Stuart playing down the road in his house – it was inevitable we’d end up doing something together.”

Stereophonics played their first gig in 1994 and signed to Richard Branson’s new V2 label just two years later.

“That seems pretty quick, even now,” says Kelly.

“But what we had, which a lot of bands don’t these days, was a bit of time to develop.

“Our first single went in at number 51, I think. If that happened to a band today, they’d be dropped within a week.

“We’re on our seventh album now and we’ve got more ideas going on than some bands have on their second, so there’s plenty of life left in the tank, let me tell you.”

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Kelly doesn’t turn the conversation to sales figures, or markets or audience demographics.

He talks about where he comes from, and hanging out with his mates – the band.

“Richard had a house built near where we grew up, I’ve lived in London for nine or ten years now, but we still hang out, we’re still best mates.

“When the band’s on tour we travel together, stay together – we don’t just meet up on stage like a lot of bands do.

“That all comes from how we grew up, the grounding and ethics you grow up with as a kid – hard work, having a laugh, taking care of one another – stay with you forever.

“My dad was a singer, so I was used to a bunch of blokes in a dressing room talking rubbish and arguing about music – that Welsh sarcasm thing, it looked like a good thing to do.

“And it is. It’s one of the best jobs in the world, mate.”

Stereophonics facts

• The band was named after Stuart Cable’s family radiogram.

• Kelly studied film at college and the BBC showed an interest in some of his early scripts.

• He had some success as a boxer at youth level.

• Kelly’s dad, Arwyn, released a single (a cover version of Graham Nash’s Simple Man) with his band, Oscar and the Kingfishers, who shared a manager with The Hollies and supported Roy Orbison. Kelly reckons he has the last remaining copy of the single on his jukebox at home.