2005 was quite a remarkable year for McFly. They scored their second number one album, Wonderland (debut album Room On The Third Floor entered the UK album chart at No1, earning the band an award from the Guinness Book of Records for being the youngest band ever to chart at No1 with their debut album (an award previously held by The Beatles). They had two more number one singles (All About You, I'll Be OK), which brought the total number of chart-topping singles released by the band to five (while guitarist and vocalist Tom Fletcher has co-written a further three No 1's for Busted bringing the total to a remarkable eight No 1 hits, all before the age of 21).

They headlined the Live 8 concert in Japan and played at the pre-G8 summitt in Glasgow. They embarked on another sold-out arena tour, which was later turned into a No1 platinum selling DVD. They made their first film, Just My Luck, with Lindsay Lohan, the hottest young actress of the moment. The film was one of the biggest teen chick flicks of the year in the US where it was No 3 at the box office on release. The experience provided them with material for their most recent number one: Please Please was inspired by drummer Harry Judd's offscreen dalliance with co-star Lindsay Lohan 'it's not obviously about it, it's got subtle links' Tom begins to explain, before a slightly aggrieved-looking Harry interrupts: 'Subtle links?' he frowns, 'like please, please Lindsay?'.

They travelled to Uganda as ambassadors for Comic Relief. They performed at the Royal Command Performance and met the Queen, an experience only mildly tainted by drummer Harry Judd's unique choice of coiffure 'I had a mohican, he groans'. They gained fans from far beyond the usual pop milleu - 'I've lost count of the number of my mates, or my brother's mates, or my dad's mates that have seen us live and are shocked, who go 'damn, you're really good'' says Harry. Amassing a fanclub that includes everyone from screaming teens to Brian May of Queen. 'He came onstage with us the other day' says guitarist and vocalist Danny Jones. 'It was one of the greatest moments ever for me. He wrote a thing on his blog afterwards saying that we could easily outplay any respectable rock band. And we had a jam with him backstage beforehand as well. Andy from Razorlight walked in as we were jamming with Brian May and said 'well, that's one way to warm up for a gig''

Given that 2005 was the year that pop music was widely pronounced dead, McFly continued to buck the trend with a triumphant 12 months work, after which the quartet took some Christmas holidays.

They returned refreshed, with bassist Dougie Poynter bearing what Tom describes as 'this whole vision for McFly, all these ideas for the next album. Me and Danny went on a cruise from Miami all around the Carribean, and we had a drunk chat about it one night on the balcony of the ship' explains Dougie. 'There was lots of surf stuff around, which was really inspiring, designs by this artist called Drew Brophy that I really liked. We already had the album title Motion In The Ocean from when we were in a burger bar in Beverly Hills and a friend of ours was telling us about a friend of his who apparently has a really small dick and had said 'it's not the size of your boat, it's the motion in the ocean'. Me and Tom looked at each other, like: 'album name!''.