"I couldn't listen to it," he says frankly. "I had lost my band and he went on to have a solo career and that was painful. When Richard played with Coldplay, I turned it off.
"I had to find a way to deal with the fact that this thing that was so precious to me was lost. My way to deal with that was to not listen to Richard's records. But I knew that I would rather have him at the top of the charts than some Pop Idol."
Although Ashcroft is contractually obligated to record another solo album, Jones thinks the band still has a lot to say.
"I've started in this band when I was 16, so a massive part of my life has been devoted to this. It means the world to me to do this. I'm not going to lie and say that everything's all of a sudden easy in this band. We still do have our disagreements about things, but we're a bit more mature and better able to deal with it.
"When the band first split up, it was easy to be flippant about it. I think we all thought we'd just end up in another band. But I don't think any of us would be that careless again.
"If we have a disagreement, we'll work through it. It won't be, 'F--- you, f--- you, f--- you and f--- you.'"
