”What have we been up to recently?” wonders Molko aloud. He looks genuinely stumped.

”Injuries and serious jet lag. Stefan fell off stage in South Africa during Garbage’s set and broke his wrist. That evening I slept in the exact same position for 10 hours, and woke up with a compressed vertebrae in my neck. Since then I haven’t been able to feel half my head. It’s especially weird when I shower.”

The singer inclines his head slowly, as if to prove his pain. “What is it with this country?” Olsdal asks, perplexed. “Last time I came out here I had a really bad chest infection, the sort of infection where you question your life.” He gave up smoking shortly after. Someone should have told his fans in Melbourne, proferring fags through a closed van window. “This time I have a broken wrist. We were lucky. We didn’t have to cancel any shows. I feel a little inadequate, though, like a mother’s boy. It’s not good for my soulo.” He lowers his voice, confiding: “It’s the hand I fondle my tool with.”

”Australia’s cool,” the bass-player adds. “It’s very intense. It’s like America, only with less big city stress and paranoia. The men I’ve met have been butch, without being too macho.”

”Here in Australia,” laughs Molko, “we like to engage in mullet-spotting.”

This isn’t Placebo’s first time here. Earlier this year they played a club tour to fervent recpetions. Without You has gone gold, and is on the verge of turning platinum. Hence, when the band were offered a choice between struggling across America - a country they could well be too alien for, and too sexually explicit - and returning to Australia, they chose the latter. At least with silverchair, they could play the big venues, reaching all their under-18’s who’d missed them first time round. The first few gigs in Canberra and Woolongong were a little slow.

“We were feeling very fucked-up with fatigue and jet-lag,” explains Molko. “Melbourne and Adelaide have been incredible. There’s been a lot of pent-up teenage sexual energy coming out. We’re doing our best, considering I get twitches in my head and Stefan has a cast. We’re a band who desparately needs to get off the road,” the singer adds, with real foresight. “We’re falling apart at the seams.”