British country-folk singer Charlie Landsborough has done many jobs, but none he loves so much as what he does now. After releasing his 26th album, he tells Steve Pratt why he has’s no intention of stopping 

HE’S in his 70s but Charlie Landsborough isn’t about to retire. As a late starter – he didn’t find success in the music business until he was in his mid-50s – he intends to make the most of his time as a performer.

“I am at an age where I should have retired, but with five kids…” he says by way of explanation for continuing to tour (he plays in Whitley Bay later this month) and make albums (his 26th, Silhouette, was released last month).

“If my voice was gone and my heart wasn’t in it I might consider it but I like it too much to stop doing it.”

If he does get fed up – and, listening to him, that sounds unlikely – he has only to walk past a primary school to remind him of his former life as a teacher. His list of former occupations is long, with postman, railway driver and a brief spell in the army among many on his CV.

He played on a semi-professional basis in dockside pubs and the like in and around Birkenhead where he grew up before making it his work.

“I was playing of a night and the dream was always of a life in music.

I got it, but a bit late,” he says.

Back in the mid-1990s he’d had another rejection and was 50-odd in a business that thrived on good looks and youth – “neither of which I had”.

An appearance on RTE’s Kenny Live Show in Ireland changed all that. His song, What Colour Is The Wind?, began being played in Ireland, eventually reaching number one in the Irish charts.

More TV work in the UK followed, as well as further albums (which have topped the British country charts) and tours. His worry that perhaps his appeal was “only for Irish ears” proved unfounded.

Landsborough and his five-strong band tour twice a year. Every other year they tour Australia.

“I have a fantastic band. It’s changed quite a bit over the years, but I seem to be dead lucky and the people are fine,” he says.

“We are all great friends, we all enjoy each other’s company and if we have a day off, we go and have a couple of pints together. They all do individual things between tours and just prior to it I send out a set list which they peruse and then we get together, rehearse and off we go.”

Australia is a fantastic place, he says, and with the people, what you see is what you get. A bit like people in the North-East and his homeland of Merseyside, he adds “They sent me to Australia a number of years ago and I thought it’s thousands of miles and no bugger will have heard of me. But it was great fun and they did know all about me. People travelled a long way to see me”

He’s settled in what he does and accepts his level of fame. “I am not a superstar by any stretch of the imagination but I’m doing what I want to do.

“ I still go to the same places and see the same people and have the same friends, so I can do what I like,” he says.

  • An Evening With Charlies Landsborough: Whitley Bay Playhouse, March 23. Box office: 0844-2481588