While Andy McCluskey kept the OMD name, Paul recruited the band’s drummer Malcolm Holmes and keyboardist Martin Cooper for The Listening Pool. With Malcolm and Martin wanting to write as well, before OMD split Andy and Paul briefly toyed with trying to make an album where Andy wrote one side and Paul, Malcolm and Martin the other. The Listening Pool eventually released one album, 1994’s patchy Still Life.
Paul also had a spell as a label boss, forming Telegraph Records to release material by Liverpool musicians including Lotus Eaters singer Peter Coyle and China Crisis. “Telegraph was a fun time,” he says. “But my divorce hit and I lost the plot for a while before moving back to the UK.”