WATCH: Paul Young marks 40 years since his big breakthrough with No Parlez

Dates include Thursday, May 18 at the Hawth, Crawley; Sunday, May 21 at the New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth; and Thursday, October 19 at G Live, Guildford.

The tour and the book Behind The Lens mark 40 years since his big breakthrough when No Parlez went to number one and spawned iconic hits including Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home).

More success followed with the number one album The Secret Of Association and the worldwide hit Everytime You Go Away, plus an appearance at Live Aid and more.

Since then Paul has gone on to have fun in his tex-mex band Los Pacaminos.

“40 years! It doesn't seem it but sometimes it just seems like a whole world away. 40 years is pretty drastic. It's like two-thirds of my life so yes it's a little bit like I was a different person. I had that massive fame and then there was Live Aid. And then there was a period of adjustment. Now I am at a level where I'm really happy with what I do. I couldn't possibly wish for anything more. You can see people that have greater hits and more success but then you see them working their *** off and I'm so glad to have a bit of time to do what I want to do as well.”

And the point is that Paul has survived it all. Paul was with the bands Streetband and Q-Tips. Then came the phenomenal solo success. “But I always took a very pragmatic view of the music industry. We just didn't take it seriously. When you get to the level that you're getting picked up in a massive limousine from the airport you've just got to laugh and think ‘Well, this is crazy!’ and when terrible things happened, you just had to remember that the greatest thing you could possibly do was just to try and laugh it off and see the ridiculousness of it all. We took the mickey out of it all as much as we could and the fact is you just had to enjoy it for what it was. I always had a dream as a kid of being a famous musician but still to be able to do the things that I wanted to do when I got older and that's what has happened..

“Streetband were trying to be cutting edge but they were practically guillotined by a comedy song. And Q-Tips were riding the crest of a wave for a while and then they weren't.

"So I just decided to use all the modern instrumentation. It all came together and I found a style of singing that I loved. I was mixing synthesisers and drum machine and that's what was successful.” Now comes the memoir looking back on it all: “We did it through a series of interviews but when the (draft book) came back to me it didn't sound like me at all. So I went and rewrote it all in my own words.

"I booked myself into a cabin and started writing the whole thing and as I was doing it, I was remembering more and more anecdotes and more and more ridiculous things were coming back to mind even after the book was finished so that's why we're doing the tour now, a chance to tell those stories, stories that are actually better spoken out loud than they would have been in the book.”

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