FOR Chris Rea the notion of a gruelling tour is a myth.

“People with egos and popstars, where it all has to be choreographed and just so, have a difficult time,” he says. “If you’re just someone who sings and plays music because you love it, it’s not gruelling at all. You’re getting up when you want to, making music, then going back to a nice hotel and having some beers. It’s like you’ve won a competition!”

It’s fair to say 20 years after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which threatened to cut his career short and led to a series of further complications including diabetes, the writer of The Road To Hell is in a happy place.

“The day before yesterday I wrote a song called King Of The World,” he says while standing outside in “the freezing cold” of Longcross, near Heathrow, while the rest of his crew have their dinner.

“It was one of those brief mornings in life where nothing is wrong.

“The older I get the more I speed up because I’ve got so much still to do. Every single day I write a song – this morning I wrote one called Kaftan Summers about memories of the 1960s and being young.”

With the multi-platinum success of The Road To Hell in 1989 – the opening track of which saw the central character meet the ghost of his mother in a traffic jam – he gained a name for darker tracks.

“My wife often said she felt uncomfortable about the type of emotion that was coming out in these things,” says Rea. “She didn’t like The Road To Hell – she says to people ‘I live with that man who wrote this deep and dark thing!’ “I try to avoid the dark songs – I still write them as it’s part of the process, but I don’t want everybody to commit hari kari or slit their wrists, which according to some journalists I’m very good at doing.”

Ever since undergoing the Whipple procedure in 2001, the same treatment for pancreatic cancer which Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilco Johnson underwent earlier this year, Rea has been incredibly prolific – most notably with the 2005 11-CD set Blue Guitars.

In March he is planning to release another double-CD and 58-page book reworking his 1996 album and film La Passione about a young boy’s love of Ferraris.

Fans coming to the Brighton Centre to hear favourites like On The Beach and Josephine shouldn’t fear though.

“When I was younger I always said ‘Forget about the past, I want to do my new record’,” he says. “I don’t mind doing the old ones now – although I do them differently every time. The stuff off [2002’s] Dancing Down The Stony Road and the Blue Guitars box get reactions as if they were hit singles. I did Stony Road for a bit of fun after I had been ill in hospital for 16 weeks. I put it out there and it went gold much to everyone’s surprise.”

Today his main focus is on playing the blues – but he doesn’t want to keep the genre preserved in plastic.

“I often have arguments with some of the old boys who want it to stay exactly the same as 1968,” he says. “But blues never did – it was born in Africa, went to New Orleans and finished up in Chicago changing all along the way. I don’t play the same kind of blues as Eric Clapton – he’s the king of what he does. There’s no point in trying to copy people like that. My blues is more of a gospel blues – there’s an Irish influence.”

He hasn’t been afraid to explore different styles in recent years – most notably on the 2003 and 2007 Hofner Blue Notes albums, where he created his own fictional 1960s beat group The Delmonts.

“Those gigs were fun, especially when you try to play like those guys did,” he says. “A lot of people don’t realise how good those early guitarists were. I’ve won money from people betting they can’t play and sing The Beatles’s I Feel Fine at the same time.”

As well as his music he is enjoying a parallel career as a racing driver competing in the 1950s Saloon Car series.

“I’ve had a racing life for 25 years, as soon as I had paid the mortgage off,” he says. “I didn’t start playing music until I was over 21, and I didn’t start racing until later. Nigel Mansell’s younger than me, but he has retired. My car is an ex-police car, it goes all over the track sideways. The people I race with are wonderful people without any pretentions.

“I love doing it – it can take two years to take two-tenths of a second off a lap-time, but you go home so happy.”

Doors 6.30pm, tickets £35. Call 08448 8471515.