Madness frontman Suggs is back on the road with a show about his life, which he brings to East Yorkshire next week. Will Ramsey reports.
Suggs was going to call the show "Mad Life Crisis". In the end, the 52-year-old stuck to something a little safer, though with none of the strangeness of the past half-century left out.
"Having gone all round the houses, I've called it My Life Story," said the Madness singer.
"That won't win any prizes for originality but does at least tell you what you can expect, the good bits and the darker moments."
The touring show – "a memoir", Suggs calls it – does not skimp on the tougher aspects of his life.
Finding fame with the self-styled "Nutty Boys" of Madness – whose ska-pop first caught the public mood in the 1980s – his early years were deeply unconventional.
Born Graham McPherson in Hastings, he is the only child of Edith, a jazz singer, and William, who worked for a photographic developers before succumbing to drug addiction.
"Dad left home when I was about three," Suggs said.
"I have no recollection of him and he never featured in my life. My mum later told me she'd come home and found him with needles sticking out of his hands.
"Heroin was his drug of choice and it's a one-way street that takes you further and further away from real life. In the end, it did for the marriage."
Moving first to Liverpool with his mum and then to London, he recalls joining her at watering holes such as the Colony in Soho.
"I'll never forget it,' said Suggs.
"You'd walk up this rickety green staircase and enter a room full of artists and actors and various hangers-on, all drinking and smoking.
"But, amid all the booze, it was a creative hotbed. Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, George Melly, Jeffrey Bernard – they were all regulars.
"I clearly remember staring up through the thick fug of tobacco smoke, the occasional hand ruffling my hair or giving me a florin, sometimes even a ten-bob note.
"I couldn't really understand what was going on at an adult level, which was probably all for the best. But there was a feeling of community and I was never in any danger."
A few years later he had renamed him- self Suggs – taken from the surname of an obscure jazz drummer – and got into music. At about the same time, Suggs later discovered, his absent dad's life was unravelling.
"He died aged 40 from a whole variety of drug-related conditions, his new wife following him, probably from a drug overdose, a year later," said Suggs.
"So just as I was getting together with the band that became Madness, my father's time was up. I've always found that rather poignant."
Fame and fortune followed, with Madness – despite disbanding for a few years in the late 1980s – being a near constant presence for him.
"For me, the band has always been a bit like a surrogate family," said Suggs.
"We're all a bit dysfunctional, all a bit stronger for being together."
The touring show, which includes songs from Suggs alongside the reminiscences, first went out on the road last year.
Given his eventful life, the only problem has been cramming it all in.
"When we were rehearsing, my keyboard player would stop every so often and say: 'Was that bit really true?'," said Suggs. "And it was, all of it. Amazing, really."
• Suggs is at Bridlington Spa on Tuesday at 7.30pm. Tickets: £24.50. To book: 01262 678258.
