Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To a generation and beyond Suggs is a man who has been with them probably throughout their entire lives. He and Madness are so entwined as part of the very fabric of the U.K’s glowing music history that to dismiss him would be reckless, even a crass thoughtless statement.

For all those that made their way to Southport’s Atkinson Theatre to listen to him relate, admittedly in a condensed form, moments of his lifetime from his best-selling autobiography in the two hour My Life in Words and Music, were left thrilled, amused, slightly stunned at the candour and the utter excitement of a man who has lived and been admired.

The stage at The Atkinson Theatre was set in such a way to suggest that this was to be no ordinary dip into someone’s life, no series of the mundane peppered with amusing anecdotes. This was a procession, a cavalier demonstration of the well delivered personal monologue, the act of carrying an audience through almost every turn of the wheel and smiling even when a certain memory becomes slightly too much to burden anymore.

Suggs starts the evening with him turning 50, a momentous occasion in itself, but also with the death of his favourite cat and how that passing caused him to revisit his incredible life and question who he is. Death has this habit of turning up at the least expected times, of making each one of us take stock of our lives but what if you have lived your life in the semi-glare of a series of best-selling albums in which pretty much your history has been laid bare for all to see and sing along too.

For the audience this was a chance to hear, perhaps a hero, talk, to present a performance of the highest order and to wallow in their own nostalgia of where they were when they first heard songs such as Baggy Trousers, One Step Beyond, Cecilia and Forever Young. Suggs though is more than just a singer in one of the greatest bands to have come out of the late 70s, he is a raconteur, a man with many tales and the one that kept coming back was his search for the memory of his dad. To have heard his mother say, “He was a nice man” was one that you could see shocked him, even after he left his wife and child, she still thought of him as a nice man. The journey was short but also seemingly painful and behind that wonderful smile the audience could not help but love the man on stage more.

To talk about your life in a book is one thing, you can hide behind the words to a degree but to come on stage, looking quite resplendent and hearing the audience roar as if you have just played every song from an outstanding career when all you have actually done is tell them that life become something new when your cat died takes imagination and sheer guts.  You rarely get the chance to see a crowd so moved when an author takes the stand, trust in Suggs to be a Prince amongst men.

Ian D. Hall