Glamrock legends serve up all the greatest hits

Dave turns 80 next year and he feels it's definitely time to call a halt to ten dates back to back but he will continue with gigs in the UK as and when and especially in the bigger venues.

In the meantime, they play Hastings’ White Rock Theatre on Friday, November 28.

“It makes it sound like I am packing up but I am not. The principal thing is that this is the last UK tour. I'm approaching 80 and we've been doing this Christmas tour for 32 years and it just feels that back-to-back gigs are not so ideal for a person who is 80! Our act is very physical. It’s not like we are just sitting there like The Eagles. We are an act. We entertain and we are bobbing around on the stage and I get up on top of a box!

“When I come off stage after an hour and 15 I have a tiny drink and I go straight to the hotel and go to bed these days! I don't mind two shows on the trot especially abroad where I do most of our work but I don't want to do ten shows back to back any more. It takes longer and longer to recover from the excitement but the excitement is definitely still there. So I thought let's say this is the last tour and that's a good idea because people will rush to come along but I am happy to say that I'm still going to be around, I’m still going to do gigs in England but probably just the bigger ones.”

The point is, as Dave says, these are songs that cannot be replaced: “The songs are forever in people's heads. And it really is the younger generation as well. It's not just people aged 50 to 60 that are coming along. We get 15-year-olds and 20-year-olds and 25-year-olds who have discovered the songs through their parents so I'm definitely not packing up. I'm just adjusting things!

“People are a bit gobsmacked when they see me running around and think how could I be this age but I think the fact is that a lot of people that do something physical just don't like the word retirement. I probably couldn't spell it let alone do it. My feeling is why would you pack up doing something that you just love so much… and I still do.”

Dave holds up a photograph of him in full-on glam mode with glitter from 1973. As he says, the enjoyment is just as strong now: “And who would have thought that people would still be interested in our Christmas song after 52 years… but they are.”

It had such huge impact at the time: “The country was in a mess. There were strikes. There were three-day weeks and there were powercuts and you know what the unions were like back in those dreadful days. We had silly tax. We were paying 80 to 90 percent to the government. My job had a threshold of five years and the government did very well out of SLADE! But it was very difficult times, and we came out with this song that cheered people up!

“Someone was saying to me if I had my time again would I change anything and I would say definitely not. All the workings in our life were our own power. What we put into it we've got out of it, and there was a lot of work in maintaining success.”

Plus it was a great era: “I couldn't have known about the glam rock situation but I was already wearing silky shirts, already developing it but what really helped us was colour TV. The 60s had been black & white and with black & white, the only colour you could see was silver. But when we had Top of the Pops and it was in colour then people could see all the gear. It was like going from a square box to HD TV.”

But that's only part of it: “Without good songs you're not going to do anything, and we had really great songs.”

And then the image took it to the next level: “In 73 I couldn't go anywhere! It felt like I was a Beatle! It was that big, people chasing us everywhere and not just the girls. We had a massive boy following as well. The boys loved Nod and his flat cap and his sideboards and the girls loved me because I was a bit androgynous on stage!”