And each year, like clockwork, the former members of the band, Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, Anni-Frid “Frida” Lyngstad and Agnetha Fältskog, smile and then politely say, “No thank you.”

Not that the offers to reform for what would be a true “farewell tour” haven’t been generous. An interview today in The Times of London with the powerhouse songwriting duo behind Abba, Andersson and Ulvaeus, mentions one particular promoter who was willing to pony up $1 billion. (Yes, billion – with a “b.”)

No one has been more vocal about the fact that it’s an event on par with the discovery of Atlantis than Andersson, who year after year offers the same straightforward – and to most people – completely logical reasons for why it’s so unlikely to happen.

First and foremost, the former members of Sweden’s most famous musical export are quite frankly happy with their lives as they are. Andersson and Ulvaeus continue to write music and perform, Fältskog also records and performs live occasionally, and Lyngstad, who has devoted her energies to charity work, has said in multiple interviews that she has no interest in returning to a music career.

Second, the lucrative offers to reform offer very little enticement to four people who are undoubtedly living very comfortably on the money the music of Abba still brings in year after year. Not to mention what they’ve each made from solo projects.

And third, as Andersson puts it, “the looks on the faces in the audience as they realised we had grown old.”

Simply put, Abba today would in no way, shape or form be the Abba of “Waterloo,” “Dancing Queen” or even the group’s final recording together, “The Day Before You Came.” When a band stays together over the course of three or four decades, they age in the public eye, as does their music, and their fans get the chance to grow accustomed to the changes time has wrought.

But a young group that called it quits and walked away from the spotlight in 1980 suddenly stepping center stage again? It would be quite a shock. To everyone involved.

Last summer, after the sudden death of Michael Jackson, rumors began to fly hot and heavy that producers of the singer’s “This Is It” comeback shows at London’s O2 Arena were making offers to Abba to step in to fill the now-vacant dates. Andersson sat down with BBC’s Jonathan Ross and quickly put an end to the speculation, as well as issuing his annual proclamation that there would almost certainly never be an Abba reunion.

Which brings us to today and writer Pete Paphides’ interview with Andersson and Ulvaeus in The Times. The duo was in London for the premiere of the English version of their musical treatment of Vilhelm Moberg’s 2,000-page Swedish epic “Kristina,” which debuted in that country in 1995 to rave reviews.

But, as is usually the case, the conversation didn’t focus on the current project for long and talk soon turned to Abba.

Both musicians offered up some interesting Abba chestnuts, like when Ulvaeus revealed that the band never felt the need to make it in the States because “the English people treated us like their own … with ‘Top of the Pops’ you could reach all of Britain. But in America you reached a tiny audience doing silly TV shows we didn’t want to do anyway.”

Interestingly, Paphides seems fixated on Abba’s status in the gay community today and seems frustrated by the fact that both Andersson and Ulvaeus “never thought in our wildest dreams that we would be gay icons.”

The writer even suggests that it’s because gay people sense a sympathetic connection with Fältskog, who has made no secret of her unhappiness during Abba’s heyday and wrote in her 1997 autobiography, “As I Am,” “No one who has experienced facing a screaming, boiling, hysterical crowd could avoid feeling shivers up and down their spine. It’s a thin line between ecstatic celebration and menace.”

Ulvaeus offers that it’s “the outfits and the Eurovision” that make Abba so popular in the gay community.

I have a very simple explanation for how Andersson and Ulvaeus could “have written Hi-NRG hymns to physical desire such as ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)’ and ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ and not think it might play out well with their gay fanbase” – it didn’t exist. At least not in the way it does today.

Back then, only large cities like New York and San Francisco had anything that resembled a “gay community” and they largely existed underground. So the idea that four musicians from Sweden could write music and have no idea that it would one day be adopted and adored by millions of gay fans across the globe makes perfect sense. They literally couldn’t have imagined it.

Eventually, toward the end of the interview, Paphides again broaches the subject of an Abba reunion, but a limited one: “an intimate, one-off performance for invited guests and families, perhaps with a small orchestra, focusing on some of the more ‘mature’ material from the later albums” that would be filmed and licensed around the world.

The duo jokingly respond to the idea (“We could sing ‘The Way Old Folks Do!”), but Andersson eventually adds, “Yeah, why not?” before noting “I don’t know if the girls sing anything any more.”

And just before the pair are ushered out of the room to be whisked to Albert Hall, where their musical is opening shortly, Anderson offers, “It’s not a bad idea, actually.”

And that’s it. That’s the source of this year’s “Abba Reunion Rumor.” No tentative offers being made to the band, no venue availability being sussed out, no secret meetings of the former members. Just six little words.

As much as I love Abba – yes, I freely admit it – I’m not holding my breath for a reunion in 2010 and neither should you.

Read The Times Of London’s interview with Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson here.