With Simply Red's last album gathering dust in bargain buckets all over the land, it was feared the flame had gone out for redhead Mick Hucknall.

Love In The Russian Winter, released in 1999, was a flop by Simply Red's high standards. It only just broke one million sales, a tiny slice of the 45 million albums the band have sold in total.

Not even the legion of fans that made the seminal Stars the best-selling album of 1991 and 1992 stopped its meteoric fall into record stores' clear-out sections.

But the band's new album, Home, is a return to form. It flew into the top five when it was released in March and proves Hucknall's fire is still burning.

The singer is particularly pleased as it is the first album released on his new label, SimplyRed.com.

After the disappointment of Love In The Russian Winter, the band split with label EastWest. Hucknall denies rumours they were dropped, insisting he decided to have control of his own recordings. But either way, Home was make or break.

In the face of adversity Simply Red triumphed with their first single Sunrise, which went into the top ten last month.

Using a sample from the Hall and Oates classic I Can't Go For That, it blends sublime vocals with soulful bass.

Hucknall has enjoyed a strong influence on Home (so called because it was recorded in his Surrey house). He has always been the face of Simply Red.

But now, with this extra power behind the scenes, Hucknall has gone even further.

He says: "It's very exciting. The best thing is it seems like this is my first record all over again, like I'm just starting out."

Hucknall's influence over the band is sometimes branded arrogance. A web site dedicated to finding 1,000 people more annoying than Mick Hucknall is proof of the star's knockers.

His name rarely appears in the tabloid papers without being preceded by the word ginger. During his break from recording, most media coverage has homed in on Hucknall's womanising.

Catherine Zeta Jones, Helena Christensen and Melanie Sykes are among his alleged conquests. The night sozzled former squeeze Martine McCutcheon was sick on his famous hair is often described as her finest hour.

It seems the papers don't like the idea of a ginger lothario but Hucknall claims the criticism is a kind of racism.

He says: "I get upset if somebody attacks me personally, it hurts. I think we're now even easier targets because magazine articles can't say black in that way but they can say ginger.

"I've read some derogatory things about me. If you replaced ginger with black or even Asian, you'd be in front of a judge."

But he says: "A married man, if he's lucky, gets laid once a week. I'm a bachelor. Work it out."

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