The year started, for the five members of the Miles Hunt Club, with a month of live dates with the intention of promoting their new material to the UK audiences.  For these performances, The Miles Hunt Club consisted on Miles on vocals and guitar with Michael Ferentino on guitar and backing vocals, Andres Karu on drums and Stuart Quinnell on bass.

The UK tour began at London's Borderline Club to a sell-out crowd.  The set list contained many of the tracks that were to be included on the group's debut album - some of which had been co-written by Hunt and Ferentino.  Although the setlist remained fairly constant throughout the tour, there were sometimes when Miles threw in all or part of a previously written solo track when the need arose (equipment failure etc.)

It had been planned that the first fifty people through the doors at each of the January dates would receive a free sampler EP containing three tracks from the club's forthcoming long-player in addition to an exclusive promo-only track.  However, distribution problems at Eagle Records led to the delivery of the EP's being delayed by a few days.

After an initial shaky start whilst the group re-acquainted themselves with playing live again, the tour trekked around the UK received good reviews.  Everyone involved with the group indicated that they really enjoyed playing together and a week-long tour at the beginning of April was booked.  Between tours, Andres and Michael returned to the States but Miles took part in a series of radio interviews in a bid to promote the forthcoming single and album releases.  For most interviews, he took along his guitar and played acoustic versions of some of the tracks included on the new album including 'Everything Is Not Okay', 'Traces' and 'Flapping On The Pier (pt 2)'.

In June 2002, Miles was invited to make an appearance at the Stoke Newington Festival, a party held by the residents of his local community.  Performing under the name The Soul Winners Collective with members of British indie group Dodgy, Miles performed a short acoustic set at one of the town's bars.

Promo singles containing 'Traces' were issued to radio stations towards the end of July yet

A short series of UK acoustic dates were scheduled for the end of the year, and, shortly before his arrival on stage at the London date, Miles received a call from former Pop Will Eat Itself frontman Clint Mansell.  After the break up of Pop Will Eat Itself up in 1995, Clint had moved to the US and was currently living in Los Angeles.  He was now building a very successful writing soundtracks for films, such as Darren Aronofsky's Pi, Requiem For A Dream, The Hole, Knockaround Guys (with John Malkovich & Dennis Hopper), World Traveller (with Billy Crudup & Julianne Moore), Abandon (with Katie Holmes) & Murder By Numbers (with Sandra Bullock).

Clint wanted to know if Miles would be available to help him out with the soundtrack to a score he was working on for the film 11:14 starring Patrick Swayze, Hilary Swank, Colin Hanks & Barbara Hershey and Miles said he was very interested so made arrangements to go over to see Clint early in the New Year following his UK shows.  Once out there, the pair worked on a number of tracks for the album with Miles providing drumming and percussion duties on a number of tracks in addition to some other work.

2003

Miles returned to the States briefly in mid-April to work on some more soundtrack scores with Clint.  This time they were worked on music for a new film which Clint had been contracted for, Suspect Zero.  They also managed to record a version of  Nancy Sinatra's 'These Boots Were Made For Walking' which would eventually be featured in the film but whether any of Miles' other contributions made it to the final versions of the tracks used is not clear as he isn't credited anywhere.

From Los Angeles, Miles then headed East to New Jersey for the GIG Records 5th Anniversary Party.  The label had organised a weekend-long celebration at the Stone Pony club in Asbury Park and Miles (along with Andres, Stuart and Michael) had agreed to perform a acoustic set of tracks before Malc Treece would join them onstage for a short set of Wonder Stuff tracks. 

When Miles posted information onto the Miles Hunt Club website about this appearance, he also announced that The Miles Hunt Club had recorded two cover versions for future inclusion on a GIG Records 80's compilation album - the Human League's 'Don't' You Want Me' and the Psychedelic Furs' 'Love My War'.  Female vocals on the Human League cover were provided by fellow GIG labelmate, Virginia.  To date, these tracks have not yet been released...

It was also announced that work was underway on the group's second album which currently had the working title 'Escape From Rubbish Island' which had a tentative release date of November 2003 on GIG Records.

The GIG Records anniversary party went down a storm with American fans who hadn't seen Miles play live in the US since March 2000 barring the occasional single-date appearance throughout the period.

The set started with Miles performing two tracks acoustically, 'The Slow Drowning' and 'Someone Like The Kingbird', before being joined by Stuart, Michael and 'Dre for a further five tracks.  Malc Treece also then came onstage and together they performed six tracks from The Wonder Stuff's early days - 'Unbearable', 'It's Yer Money...', 'A Wish Away', 'Give Give Give...', 'Poison' and 'Ten Trenches Deep'.

This, however, was to be the last ever show performed by The Miles Hunt Club.

Upon him return to the UK, Miles was added to the bill for The Leveller's Beautiful Day festival to be held at Escot Park in Devon on August 16th.  However, his appearance did not go as planned due to timing difficulties and he felt the need to apologise through the Miles Hunt Club website to fans who had attended the gig specially to see him.
 

By way of a further apology, Miles made three new tracks available for download from the website from the recording sessions of January/February 2001.  One of the tracks was already familiar to many people, 'Flapping On The Pier', but whenever the track was discussed in interviews Miles would always get asked whatever happened to part one so the full version finally made it's appearance.  A series of UK acoustic dates during October were also announced with the later addition to a one-off appearance with Damien Dempsey at the Vicar Street venue in Dublin at the end of the year.  The release of Miles' next album was also put back to Spring 2004.

In September, as part of an interview for the TWSonline website, Miles said that he'd recently been working with flatmate Mark McCarthy and Republica/Cheapglue's Jonny Male on writing more new tracks for the next album.  He also told us that the next album would probably be on a new record label being set up by his management company, Spirit, called IRL.

The UK acoustic tour saw Miles primarily playing a selection of tracks from his solo back catalogue with just a small selection of Wonder Stuff tracks added in at the end when Malc Treece joined him onstage at some venues.  However, he also showcased new tracks such as 'Are You Ready For A Fist Fight', 'Was I Supposed To Say I'm Sorry', and 'Dead Like Me'.

2004

As 2003 ended and 2004 began, more work was being done on the next album.  Miles had retreated to Vada Studios in Stratford Upon Avon.  Former Wonder Stuff manager Les Johnson had introduced Miles to Matt Terry, a producer in the local are and also a member of up-and-coming local group Dharma Drive.  Miles was joined at Stratford by flatmate Mark McCarty (bass) and Les' son Luke on drums.  Work was going well and Miles was eager to announce early in the year that work was nearly completed and a release towards the end of Spring/early Summer was probably more likely.

Miles also went on a length about the reasons for the title of the album.  Having found himself living in London for a number of years, he had become increasingly tired of the Capital and the way the country was being generally mis-managed by those in power.  The title reflected his desire, and intention, to leave the UK and make a new home for himself in Dublin.  Having visited the city a number of times for both solo and Wonder Stuff concerts, in addition to times he had visited purely for personal reasons, he had fallen in love with the area and decided he would be happier based there than in the busyness of the UK's capital. The album's title track would reflect his feelings on the state of modern-day Britain as he saw it.

His first appearance of 2004 was at the Birmingham Songwriters Festival in March where he was again joined onstage for some tracks by Malc.  He continued to play a mixture of tracks from his own solo albums with just a couple of new tracks thrown in to test the waters before including an encore of Wonder Stuff material.  He then returned to Stratford to continue working on tracks for the new album.

It was confirmed in April that the all of the recording work had now been completed on the new album, with final mixing already underway.  Miles would be putting out the album on the IRL label  (a new label set up by his management company) in September.  A trio of live dates for May were also announced with a view to testing out more of the new tracks on a live audience.

Stourbridge, Stratford and London were the locations of choice for the mini-tour.  In addition to playing some of the new material that had already been showcased such as '...Fist Fight', Miles also introduced some new tracks including the title track of the new album, 'You Don't Know Who...', Shit Out Of Luck' plus a cover of Damien Dempsey's 'Apple Of My Eye'.  At one of the gigs, it emerged that things were not going well within the Wonder Stuff camp and some of the other group members had not been in contact with Miles since their December tour.  Somewhat confusingly, Miles then went on to say that a new single, 'Better Get Ready For A Fist Fight', would be released by The Wonder Stuff in August.