The newly healthy Rossi swims 40 lengths every day in his indoor pool. It, the garden and his burgeoning family, are his obsessions - along with toughness and homosexuality, his conversation is bizarrely full of shrubbery, foliage and the niceties of landscaping."I do admit," he says, like a man with a secret vice, "I love my laurel bushes I love trees. I've read so much over the years about it being a monotone drone.. but I know how to work with it now. I suddenly realised I can sing from my stomach now, I can get vibrato down there It's because of all the exercising I've been doin'."Indeed.

The idea of Rossi - who, to the untrained eye, is about as gay as Charlton Heston - coming out of the closet, shortly before the birth of his eighth child and the launch of his Jack-the-lad album, is piquant indeed.His solo album is the result of a collaboration with Tony McAnaney, an old friend, who came to his house for a couple of days to write some songs for his publisher - and stayed for nearly two months. Rossi wound up singing three of the songs, his manager played them to some record companies, "and I was that flattered when Virgin offered me a deal 'cause I didn't go looking for it." How would he describe his own voice? "Only as getting better. For years I just followed my dick around, but since I've been with Eileen [his second wife], I've been very happy and content and I don't feel I have to shag her brains out the moment I get home. Being a gentle person - what's wrong with that?"The moment passes. It occurs to you that Rossi, with his shrewd gaze and OK-squire delivery, would make a very plausible street trader himself, except for the air of a European dandy he also exudes.His family, as any Quo fan will tell you, were Italians in the ice-cream business in the Sixties.

I didn't think I could be accepted for what I am..."You realise that he's been worrying away at this subject since the moment he winced at my "manly" handshake Some extraordinary revelation seems imminent Do you mean, Francis, that .. ? "I don't mean I'm gay, necessarily I just don't see why men can't be gentlemen in both senses. It's like when people say to me about my son, 'Where's he get it from?', they think it must be his dad". What is he talking about? Rossi explains that his eldest son, Simon, is homosexual. "And there's a few members of my family who are gay, some cousins - I get on much better with them than with the macho dickheads." Proceeding warily here, I wondered if this was part of the general makeover: Francis Rossi as Mr Sensitive in his pink shirt "But I've always been that way For years I've lied to myself about it I've wanted to be tough I suppose it's just wanting to be accepted.