“I loved being a pop star. I loved having hits. I’ve never been a confident person – so having a hit was like getting a big approval.”

As Philip Oakey brings The Human League to Brighton Centre tonight he admits the band is in a pretty good place more than 30 years after the release of their classic album Dare.

“In a strange way we are doing all right,” he says. “I would almost say we are running a successful business these days, which you couldn’t say for decades.”

A big part of that is down to the way live shows are regarded in an industry where record sales are losing out to internet streaming and illegal downloads.

“We used to do shows as adverts for the records,” says Oakey. “They were such a good advert the record companies used to give you tour support.

“In a way it was reassuring to go and get record advances – maybe it made us all soft.”

He admits he has always enjoyed life on the road.

“I like to travel,” he says. “The road is the easiest place to stay - when you’re on tour everything just sorts itself out. When I’m at home I don’t know how to dress or anything!”

The Human League’s big breakthrough came just as it looked like it was all over for the band. The origins of the band date back to 1977 when Oakey joined his old schoolfriend Martyn Ware as a singer in the avant-garde electronic outfit The Future, a band he had founded with Ian Craig Marsh while at the Sheffield youth arts project Meatwhistle. The trio, who changed their name to The Human League when Oakey joined, created two critically acclaimed but relatively low-selling albums together before creative differences led Ware and Marsh to break off and form Heaven 17 with singer Glenn Gregory.

“I had a long break from them,” says Oakey, who was reunited with his old bandmates and Martin Fry’s ABC for the 2008 Steel City tour celebrating Sheffield’s music scene in the early 1980s.

“There had been bad feeling – we had common aims but when they don’t work you blame each other.

“It was great seeing them again – I wish we still lived in the same town. Seeing Martin again was good too – he’s always a cheery chap, I remembered how much I liked him.”

As the 1980 split happened only two weeks before a major European tour, Oakey couldn’t just let the project go.

“We had to do something,” says Oakey. “We had agreed to do a tour, and were going to get sued if we didn’t turn up.”

So the story goes he spotted future singers Susan Sulley and Joanne Catherall in a Sheffield nightclub. Despite them not having any professional dancing or singing experience, he asked the two friends to join the band.

“We wrote a few tunes and [record label] Virgin suggested Martin Rushent to produce the album” says Oakey. “I was worried about it – I knew Rushent was quite controlling – I wouldn’t be able to browbeat him. I tried to get out of it before we started the sessions.

“But he knew what he was doing – the material sounded really good.”

The resulting album, Dare, was home to some of The Human League’s biggest hits – including Open Your Heart, Love Action (I Believe In Love), Sound Of The Crowd and the million-selling number one Don’t You Want Me. It showcased a new shiny electropop sound, with Oakey sharing vocals with Sulley and Catherall.

“Back then we did things really quickly,” says Oakey. “As the 1980s went on there was more money about, so people were taking months to mix a record, when it should take no more than three or four days.

“It got a little too detailed – people were worrying about the third hi-hat in bar 101. In the early days we were producing albums in the punk way – if we’d not got it down in half-an-hour we would throw it away.”

The band built their own studio in 1986 - “we’ve now got more gear than we know what to do with” - and Oakey is still regularly writing music. I come up with tunes all the time, but I never know if they’re good or not,” he says. “I’ve got enough material for a couple of albums. I’m sure if recording was a money-spinner our management would say to do it.”

Instead Oakey spends his time off tour walking his girlfriend’s dog and dreaming of a different world which has inspired the name of their current tour AU.

“I’ve always been a science fiction fan,” he says. “I love the idea of an alternate universe – this is a fantasy about what would have happened if people had carried on using synthesisers in the way we used to, and not got into sampling. It’s an adolescent dream.”

Duncan Hall

Doors 7pm, tickets from £32.50.
Call 08448 471515