"How does 'Truth Hits Everybody' start? asks Stewart Copeland from inside his drum-booth.

"I do the four chuggy bits, and then we're straight into it," Andy Summers answers. "I'm avoiding the D sharp."

"Why," questions Sting.

"I thought we wanted something fuller."

"Don't we need the open string?"

"I've got that twice."

"Alternate it," suggests Sting.

"Yeah, that's what I'm doing: I didn't express myself very well."

Everything seems gentlemanly and grown-up at Sting's Tuscan estate, five hundred feet above sea level, a half-hour's drive from the Italian museum-piece city of Florence. In a storey building converted into a studio, the Police members have been rehearsing for the past three weeks, following an initial stint in Canada, for their forthcoming world tour. The very existence of this in itself is a remarkable turn of events: The first time that the innovative and immensely successful trio of Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland has played together professionally in 23 years.

I woke up one morning last year and my classical record had just gone into the pop charts, in both England and America," Sting explains the origins of this utterly unexpected reunion. He is referring to