The belligerent, black North Sea crashes with a grim rhythm in the opposite side of the main road to Brighton’s Grand Hotel. Its force, however, fails utterly to drown out the piercing squeals and squawks of the 30 or so Duran Duran fans gathered by the main entrance of the somewhat inaptly named Regency building.

It seems that every time a chambermaid adjusts a curtain in one of the front-facing bedrooms, this gaggle of girls is given cause to erupt with audible hysteria; it is noticable, also, that the chant “We want Quran Duran” has a rather ugly poetic meter4jjpt is hardly pleasing to the ear.

No wonder the group’s singer, Simon Le Bon, with whom I am partaking of afternoon tea in tlj|||ugubriously lit maroon cocktail lounge, mought that he was going to flip out the other day, during one of the Northern dates on this British Duran Duran tour: the screaming, he confides, suddenly seemed even more awful than such other characteristic Duran Duran stress situations as the need to have to talk to three different Japanese interviewers two hours before a show.