The first time I saw Bill Wyman in the flesh was in 1964. I was a fledgling actress in a theatre that shared a green room with a concert hall where the Rolling Stones were playing that night. No Beatle-style pretty boys, they were all leer and lech, anarchy and sex rolled into one. I never drank coffee, but standing in line with the pop equivalent of the anti-Christ was a chance not to be missed. When my turn came at the sugar table I asked the Stone standing beside me if he wanted one spoon or two. "Two please," Bill Wyman replied. I could have died.

That evening our cast whipped through the play knocking half-an-hour off the running time to catch the second half of the concert next door. The scene that met our eyes was astonishing: 2,000-odd teenage girls screaming so loudly they drowned out everything else. It was a disgrace, the cleaning staff complained the next morning. Wet knickers all over the place.

The Stones's former bass player laughs when I recount this tale. "It was crazy in those days. But when I tell people, they say, `don't be so dirty, that didn't happen'. But it did. They used to throw knickers on the stage. Knickers and bras. And they were the nice things that came up." Thirty-five years on and we're in Sticky Fingers, Wyman's hamburger restaurant in Kensington. There's hardly a spare inch of wall space: gold and platinum records and framed newspaper shock-horror stories bear witness to the excess and success of the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world. He left them in 1993 after 30 years.

Doesn't he regret no longer being half (with drummer Charlie Watts) of the greatest rhythm section in history? "Not for a moment. Not ever. I'm still mates with them. See them socially a lot. Not Keith. There was a bit of resentment for the first six months, I'd say, when they'd lost control of me. They are both control freaks, Mick and Keith.

"And when they lost control they couldn't deal with it. Once they got over that, then it was OK. But remember that was two-and-a-half-years after I said I was leaving. They'd dismissed it - as `he's upset over his marriage'. [The "child-bride" scandal, of which more anon.] And Mick would come round and try to talk me back into the band. But there was never any animosity." Doesn't he miss the buzz of performing? "I went to see them in 1995. The Voodoo Lounge tour. The sound wasn't so good, because it was Wembley Stadium. But I never thought for one minute I want to be up there again. Not for one minute.

"I thought yea, it's all right." It's not as if he needs the money, although he claims he's not as rich as the Sunday Times in its annual survey of Britain's millionaires would have him.

"Last year they made out I had £24 million. I say chance would be a fine thing. Give me half of that and I'll give you all I've got." Enough certainly to subsidise his latest venture, a CD trilogy of traditional "roots music" played by the best musicians around, "an archaeology" of rhythm and blues. Wyman has always been interested in collecting and categorising. There wouldn't have been a history of the band if it hadn't been for the trunkfuls of Stone-abilia, hoarded obsessively since the Crawdaddy days in Richmond in 1963.

The Rhythm Kings (an umbrella title for the participating musicians) are not a super group in the Cream/Blind Faith sense, he explains, "more like a jazz band. Not in what we play, but in the way we behave and get together. In the studio anyone could join us." Like Peter Frampton. "I've known him since he was 13 when he came knocking on my door, so I used to nurture him, get him on little demo sessions and things. If he's not around I'll ask Martin Taylor if he wants to play guitar. If he's not around I'd see if I can find someone compatible." Like Eric Clapton, say. But no prima donnas.

"The nice thing about this lot is they're all great musicians but they're quite satisfied to leave spaces for everybody else to play their nice bits and not try to show off and be top dog. And they enjoy it because they don't get a chance of playing this music on their own, in real life."

"This music" is 56 songs (divided into three albums, roughly chronological, the first was released last year) selected from Wyman's own record collection: "Blues, early country music, jazzy blues, jump music from the 1950s, Cab Calloway, Louis Jourdan that sort of stuff. A complete mixture." Spontaneous, two-in-the-morning stuff, bruised at the edges by the voice of Georgie Fame.

If a song wasn't right by the second take, explains Wyman, "we just dumped it and moved on to the next". Only the horns and backing singers were added later.

Why, I ask, are there are no young musicians? "I'd have to educate them, then we'd waste time. Most of them can't even play an instrument." Sure this isn't just sour grapes? He shakes his head. Not the kids' fault, he says. It is down to the men in suits who are interested not in music, but product.

"And if the product goes out of fashion after two sales, get a new product. Don't nurture anyone you think is talented who could sell records forever. Don't nurture them by working with them for a year with a couple of albums not having the success you expect but on the third one they hit - like they used to in the old days. Now it's make a couple of singles with these kids then if they don't work, sling them out the window and find four more."

It makes the old pro angry, just like the stranglehold of radio play-lists which means there's little chance of the album being given media air-time. Meanwhile the tour kicks off next week. Continental Europe only. Nothing to do with tax, he says, simply that's where the market is "and if you start talking 12 air fares, the money's gone. So we're going by bus."

The day's interviews have gone haywire and Wyman's running late. He cuts a slight figure, in his moss-coloured jacket and pink shirt - more gentleman gardener than rock iconoclast. It strikes me he's better looking now than he was in the 1960s. Less Neanderthal Man. Just a slight quilting of his face hints at his 63 years.

Bill Wyman was always the granddaddy of the Stones, seven years older than the core triumvirate of Brian Jones, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger. Now, I tell him, he looks 10 years younger than the raddled Keith and Mick. The reason is simple. No drugs. "When I'd been married for three years and had a six-month-old son. I had responsibilities, I would go home at night." It was the same on the road. "I'd go back to normality in my room. They'd be hanging out listening to the tapes they made of the show and raving to each other `oh you played great there'. They'd play it all night at full blast and kept people in the hotel awake. Keith still does it all the time. I'd just go to my room, read a book, watch TV and go to bed."

Wyman's addiction was different: girls. Although he says he's a reformed character, married for the last five years to an American former model, Suzanne Accosta and father of three little girls. "When I first asked her she said `No, I know you too well. I don't trust you. I can't deal with a relationship like yours, girls everywhere'. She said `if we ever got together you'd have to give up all that'. I said `I will'." She knew what she was taking on. When they first met in 1979 Wyman was still living with Astrid Lundstrom, his partner of 17 years, and Suzanne was still in her teens. They had "a little relationship" while Wyman was cutting a Stones album in Paris where she was modelling, but they remained friends and kept in touch. Fifteen years later they married.

"I knew my private life was in a mess and there came a time in 1993 when I thought, I've got to settle down and if I want another family I'd better have it now. And who can I think of, old girlfriends, anybody who I might think it would work with seriously for the rest of my life. And Suzanne's name just came to the fore and I rang her up, and said, `have you got a relationship going?' `No.' So I said, `well come over for a holiday'. And when she came over I said `will you marry me?' Pretty much straight away."

In spite of everything, there's an apparent innocence about the man. "He's a nice guy," says one of the waiters. "Always got time for you." The interview stops now and then when we're interrupted for a `hello', a slap on the back, a signature. He is inordinately proud of his wife (which is how he always refers to her). He recounts how, after giving up modelling, she did a degree in fashion design and became a successful designer to the stars in LA. She doesn't spend her time at the hairdressers, or having girls' lunches or at the gym and she's a wonderful mother.

Talk of his kids brings forth a raft of out-of-the-mouth-of-babes anecdotes. Having kids late in life means that you enjoy every moment, he says. "My wife has got such a positive attitude to everything. She always looks on the bright side and that is very rare. If there is ever a problem, she finds a way of utilising the problem, of turning it around so that it becomes productive rather then destructive. I've always been pretty much like that. But I've very rarely found anybody I've had a relationship with be like that."

Certainly not Mandy Smith it would seem, the 13-year-old who Bill Wyman (then in his late 40s) fell for in 1984 and married in 1989. This whole episode was proof that a streak of bad-boy ran through Wyman's DNA just as surely as the other scandal-prone members of the Rolling Stones. Indeed they were equally appalled. Even now he can't explain what happened. "When people talked about eyes across the room, love at first sight, I used to laugh about it. It's in movies, it's in novels but it doesn't happen in real life. But it did. I just got whacked on the head."

All was wonderful for three years until the media found out - ironically, he says, this was shortly after they had temporarily split up. "Then she became a star. She got pushed into all these things, making a record, doing fashion, her family were pushing her and she was the one person who was making money and that's when she started to get sick, but of course I was the one person blamed for it." Two years later he married her.

"It was a disaster. The girl I married was not that girl." He points to the place in the far distance where earlier he had described seeing the 13-year old Mandy cross a dance floor. "That girl was kind, generous, sweet, understanding, considerate, happy-go-lucky. This one was a conniving, nasty, bitchy, turnaround of a person who became another person. All the nice things vanished and there was this other side that was all wrong."

However, Wyman stops short at accepting any kind of responsibility for the relationship and the misery that ensued. "She looked 18. She was totally accepted. As soon as people found out about her age it became like it was evil and wrong. I wasn't wrong to do what I did at the beginning. Because I think it was unavoidable. It was meant, right or wrong, and I knew it was wrong. But I shouldn't have gone back, shouldn't have tried to re-live the past."

The interview is over. I should try to come over and see them in Paris, he says. "It's going to be great." Then adds, "That time in the 1960s did I chat you up?" I tell him no. Even if he hadn't remembered, I assure him, I would have. It doesn't seem the right time to confess that the only Stone I fancied was Brian Jones.

Anyway The Wind Blows by Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings will be released by RCA Victor on October 5th.