He's the frontman of the most anarchic and arguably well-loved pop act of the 1980s.

But there has always been a sadder side to Madness frontman Suggs, real name Graham McPherson, that has never seen the light of day – until now.

The idea of this spoken word tour came from his chance meeting with a theatre producer, who told him some of his anecdotes from 30 years on the British pop scene would make an interesting show.

“I didn’t want to give an hour and a half of what happened in the band,” admits Suggs.

So instead he decided to talk both about life as a 50-year old man and about his absent father.

“He left when I was three,” says Suggs, who was born in Hastings.

“I didn’t really know him. He was sort of a figment of my imagination, lurking in my background.

“When writing the show I was thinking about my kids, who had just left home, and what it is to be a parent.

“The main focus of my life had been my kids, which got me thinking about my own childhood.”

In 2009 he admitted in an interview with The Scotsman that he didn’t know what had happened to his father. The only information he had was that he had been a heroin addict and had been admitted to Tooting Bec asylum for injecting himself with paraffin.

As he put it at the time: “He must be dead now. I mean, he would have got in touch if he was alive, wouldn’t he? Yeah, he must be dead, poor bugger.”

Since then Suggs has done more research.

“He got out of the asylum and remarried,” he reveals.

“He died in 1975, which was also when I first met the band and Suggs became an entity.

“That is the thread throughout the show – to find out where I am from – as well as telling stories about my life, the jobs I’ve had in the band, on television and radio and all the other stuff that has gone on.”

One thing which has been a constant in Suggs’s life has been the desire to challenge himself.

“I get excited if things are challenging,” he says, adding that he is currently in talks about writing a book based on the show.

“This show is the most challenging thing I have ever done. It took a long time to write and learn – the director was keen that I should learn the words – which is a strange thing, learning about your own life. It does mean I can go off beam a bit if I want. When you’re standing onstage for an hour and a half you need a structure in your head!”

The first challenges he met with the seven-strong Madness were how to get along and how to play.

“They are a challenging bunch of people,” he admits.

“Mike [Barson] knew how to play a bit of piano, Chris [Foreman] wanted to play guitar, and Lee [Thompson] acquired a sax from somewhere.

“I had never sung before in my life and some would say I still don’t.

“We practised and practised and it started to come together. When The Specials came on the scene and we realised people in Coventry were playing music similar to ours, we felt vindicated.”

Madness went on to join The Specials’ Two Tone label, touring the country with the band and labelmates The Selecter, during what Suggs now describes as “one of the best times in my life”.

As The Specials and Two-Tone disintegrated, Madness expanded their sound from the ska they loved and ended up joining forces with independent label Stiff Records, home to fellow eccentric acts Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury And The Blockheads and Elvis Costello.

“Stiff gave us freedom to do what wewanted,” says Suggs.

“That led to the videos, which had a big impact.”

Watching Madness’s videos it is easy to see why they caused such a sensation among music-lovers of all ages, especially at a time when the format was still new.

Drawing on influences ranging from Monty Python to The Young Ones, which the band guest-starred in twice, they were the perfect vehicle for, as Suggs describes them, “seven young show-offs”.

Massive success followed, with 15 top ten singles in a four-year period, including the number one House Of Fun, a cheeky tale of a 16-year-old trying to buy condoms in his local chemist.

But the amount of work the band was putting in began to take its toll.

“One of our proud boasts was that we spent more weeks in the charts in the 1980s than any other band – and we did it all in six years,” says Suggs.

“Stiff was a small label, and we were one of the few bands making any money, so they were determined to harness that energy we had.

“It was amazing fun when I was 18 and had all that energy. All I thought about was music.

“When you get into your 20s, and you start having kids and your own life, you don’t have that obsession.”

The cracks first started showing with pianist and principal songwriter Barson, who left the band following their fifth album Keep Moving.

“It was like school, pulling the legs off spiders,” says Suggs of the slow break-up.

“We should have seen the signs when Mike showed up to a photo session wearing a balaclava. He wanted to leave and be with his girlfriend, who lived abroad.

“We should have taken time off but everyone was pushing us to keep going. If we’d had a six-month break he could have seen his girl and we could have seen our young families. It had been going for six years relentlessly and it ground to a halt.”

The band reunited in 1992, following the top ten success of their re-released Labi Siffre cover It Must Be Love, and an attendant greatest hits compilation Divine.

That summer they hosted the first reunion concert Madstock! in Finsbury Park, which allegedly caused tremors in nearby apartment blocks because of their fans’ energetic dancing.

“For that period in the 1990s to the early 2000s the band was pretty erratic,” admits Suggs, explaining why he decided to release two solo albums in the mid-1990s.

“I was happy to do things on my own. In the last couple of years we decided we should give it a go.”

Although it was home to the top ten single Lovestruck, their first post-break-up album Wonderful, from 1999, didn’t set the world alight.

But ten years later the follow-up, The Liberty Of Norton Folgate, was a different matter, earning rave reviews across the board, breaking the album top five and showcasing a rejuvenated band willing to explore new avenues, such as the 12-minute long title track.

“There was a danger we would fall into a 1980s hit package thing as a novelty act,” says Suggs.

“We put a lot of effort into reviving our own enthusiasm in the band.”

This year sees the band launching their own mini-festival at Butlins in Minehead, called the House Of Fun Weekender, as well as working on a new Madness album.

“I can’t compare Madness with anyone else because I’ve never been in another band,” says Suggs.

“We could have done a greatest hits tour every Christmas and made a few quid but we felt like we had a couple of good records left in us.”

* Starts 7.45pm, tickets £27, call 0844 8717650