Partying like it's 1980, with Midge Ure

When you’ve had a life of chart hits and hit a pensionable age there might be some temptation to rest on your laurels, and indeed royalties. Not so for Midge Ure.

“I seem to tour so much these days, at a time when you’d think you’d be putting your slippers on,” he agrees. However, the Glasgow-born musician is still very much in demand, especially in summer.

“These 1980s things seem to have taken off, every weekend it’s doing a festival or two.”

But with Ure still producing new material, this means weekdays are his own. “I can get into the studio and do something new, not just the old stuff.” Indeed, the working week is like stepping back in time, as he rubs shoulder pads with old acquaintances.

“It’s quite a bizarre time,” Ure says of the revival circuit, “all these old faces you used to see walking down the hallways of Top of the Pops.”

And having recently played the Scottish leg of the Rewind festival, his next ‘home’ - Party at the Palace in Linlithgow - will see the former Ultravox frontman encounter some relative striplings like The Charlatans, and KT Tunstall, who it turns out is a personal favourite. “I watched that fantastic and fascinating TV show on families, and she’s a serious talent, a great songwriter.

"We've texted each other over the years but don’t think we’ve actually met so it'll be good to see her live."

1990s act Republica are another favourite on the bill. “I’ve seen them a few times – a great band, loads of energy.”

And fellow Scots Deacon Blue and Wet Wet Wet make for something of a dream festival lineup for fdans of a certain age.

But all quite far removed from his own past, which he’ll trawl for a retrospective album, tying in with his next record (and tour) – ‘Vienna and Visage’.