“Sadly, I think this may be our last Q Awards,” says Larry Mullen Jr, at the podium to collect U2’s Award Of Awards gong. Happily, he’s joking. But it seems that U2’s keeper of the purse-strings has some issues about the cost of this year’s visit. While Mullen Jr, Adam Clayton and Bono have flown in by private jet en route to rescheduled tour dates in Australia, Edge arrived separately this morning, on the red eye from Los Angeles. Cue a frantic dash across London and an 11^th-hour arrival at the U2 table: all, apparently at considerable cost to band finances and his own sanity.

Not that Bono’s holding it against the magazine. “We love Q,” he says from the stage. “Happy birthday, Q. You are much cooler than when you started. So are we.”

If Edge is feeling the strain, he doesn’t show it. Backstage, he exchanges banter with Noel Gallagher, members of the Manic Street Preachers and Boy George – “Where’s Larry?” chuckles the camp pop icon. “He always runs away from me.” Larry Mullen Jr is his usual laconic self, surreptitiously hiding his fag behind his back between puffs. Force of habit, he explains, as his 11-year-old is always telling him off for smoking at home. Adam Clayton looks slightly orange, the result of an encounter with an over-zealous make-up artist in preparation for a TV interview this afternoon. And Bono? He’s giving the full force of his Bononess to anyone who will listen. At one point the has three members of the Q editorial team scratching their heads over his enigmatic pronouncements – “Love is better than peace. I’m all about the love”- before holding forth about his latest project: persuading companies such as Gap Inc. to produce clothes in Africa rather than China. “It’s about making Africa sexy,” he says.

Later, when asked what guidance he would offer to Keane, Muse and Razorlight, young pretenders to U2’s Biggest Band In The World crown, he responds by way of some cryptic advice to “be careful of those Chinese rugs”, followed by several verses of Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life sung while vigorously slapping his knees.

EDGE: [Mock sneering] He’s getting soft. He’s getting a bit old. He’s losing the edge. No, Bono’s doing an amazing job but he’s crossed the line from being just an activist. Rather than being outside the meetings with a placard, he’s inside the meetings explaining in a polite way that unless they do what he says, he’s going to get very, very upset and they will be sorry. He’s doing great, but I also feel that we have a responsibility to be artists and artists have certain prerogatives that politicians don’t. Artists can ask, “Why not?” We can’t afford to stop acting like artists just because Bono’s got this way into the political system. Politicians aren’t always going to like us as a result.

E: I think the new video is probably going to stir things up a little bit. It’s a kind of fantasy scenario, which said, What if the American troops had arrived in New Orleans to do what they’d been doing elsewhere in the world, particularly in Iraq.

LARRY MULLEN: [Laughing] Well, it would mean that, as well as being three feet under water, New Orleans would be fucking bombed to bits!

E: [Bashfully] True.

LM: No, I know what you’re saying, sorry. If the American government had put in even part of the resources that they’re putting into bombing Iraqis into saving their own people in New Orleans, how amazing would that have been? That’s certainly what I took from the video.

E: Well, Rick’s whole thing is to strip things back to the pure essence. That’s his version of innovation and that’s what he’s trying to encourage us to do. Over the years, we never thought we were that interesting, so we were always trying to find other things to do with our sound or our personality. Put it through the mincer in a way. It’s an interesting process to turn it completely around.

E: I don’t know. It’s too early to say. Will there be a new record next year? We hope, but we don’t know. We’ve got about five or six songs that are in good enough shape that we feel strong about them, but not in good enough shape that we could record them. Any titles? No, not yet.

E: It’s going to be a very melodic record. It’s interesting to me that some of the artists who were really glossed over in the early period of the band’s existence I’m starting to “get” more and more now. People like the Bee Gees. You listen to their work now and think, “My God, how brilliant were they as songwriters?” But totally undermined by a lot of bad hair and living in LA, or whatever.

E: No, but just melodically... And some of the things that the Eagles wrote – amazing songs. It’s a new-found appreciation for pure melody. That seems to be what we’re all interested in at the moment.

BONO: [Carefully] I’m not sure a rock star is ever going to win such an award. I feel like I’m already over-awarded for what I do. I know Muhammad Yunus [Bangladeshi banker who developed a system for offering credit facilities to his country’s poor], who won the award this year, and he is just an exceptional gentleman and he’s got a really brilliant idea that deserves that kind of exposure.

B: I think, erm, the highlight is going to happen next week, which is a grudge match. We rarely cancel live dates, and last year we had to in Australia and Japan and New Zealand, and we’re going back there now. It’s a very different feeling when you’re leaving home only for a month. These might be our best dates ever. I feel like we’re going on our holidays.

B: You know, if I wasn’t doing what I’m doing now, I’d be doing what you’re doing now.

B: No, I appreciate that. And when somebody said turn left or turn right... I definitely got the cash point. But being in a newspaper office and seeing them in full flight. They have lunch standing up, which I thought was very interesting. I think by 3.30, 4 o’clock people were just running around. Balls get dropped, facts get bent into different shapes. I’ve got a lot of respect for them. I really, really enjoyed my time there.

B: Funnily enough we’re talking to a car company at the moment, but it’s a Red hybrid. There’s a queue of companies that want to get involved. The thing about Red that you’ve got to understand is, the marketing pounds that they spend, it’s in a different league. When we came out in the US, Gap bought five full-page ads in the New York Times. Every billboard in Manhattan. This is for Aids. We could never even get close to that. So it’s not just the cash, but it’s all the heat on the high street.

B: I wanna try and get a job for the baby’s dad. In the apparel sector. That’s what [wife Ali Hewson’s Fair Trade clothing range] Edun’s all about. You know, my missus – she’s in the clothing line. We’re trying to get jobs to Africa, and then people will be able to afford to keep their children. I have to say that one of the hardest things that happened to me in my entire life happened in the mid-’80s – it’s one of the reasons I’m doing this. It was a man, this beautiful, noble African man, handing me this child, and saying: “Please, take this child. Because if you take it, the child will live and be educated, and if you don’t he will surely die.” And I didn’t take the child. So I’m very happy that Madonna bought a first-class ticket for a poor African. I think that’s amazing.

B: It was against the rules. And in a certain sense... I did.

B: It’s true. My kids’ piano teacher, Dawn, she’s an exceptional musician, and every time I take a piano lesson I write a song, because I learn a new chord or I learn a new way of doing something. Window In The Skies [new track on the U218 Singles collection] started out as a piano lesson.

B: No, I don’t think that’s going to work on tour. I tried playing piano during The Sweetest Thing on our last tour and people had a little snooze.

B: That’s what I thought.

B: I don’t know. Look, Rick Rubin’s got this great idea. And the idea is, “Let’s not go into the studio till we have the songs.” Could catch on. I think making us wait, until they’re not good songs, but great songs. You know, great is what happens when very good gets tired. [Leaning forward] So we’re going to out-stare our averageness. We have to. What else is a band like U2 going to do? We should either just fuck off, or be really brilliant.

ADAM CLAYTON: Our first photo shoot.

LM: [Spluttering indignantly] What’s been in fashion for the last 10 years? I figured out – back then – that in about 25 years that stuff would come back into fashion. I was right. If you watch most of the young rockers at today’s event a lot of them will be wearing the very same bell-bottoms that I was wearing. I had a vision of the future.

AC: And you invented Britney. Where would she have been without the midriff?