The final batch of premium seats for Marti Pellow’s March 10 visit to the Dublin 3Arena have gone on sale from https://singularartists.ie

Accompanied by his old pals from the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, he’ll be dipping liberally into Wet Wet Wet’s classic debut album, Popped In Souled Out, as well featuring the band’s other hits and material from his own solo records.

Marti was in Dublin yesterday for a whirlwind round of promo, which included a sit-down with our man Stuart Clark. Over to you, Mr. C…

Bastard! Marti Pellow is only a couple of years younger than yours truly but unlike me still has 1). All of his own hair, 2). A body that's been in the gym recently and 3). Energy levels that make Jedward look positively lethargic in comparison.

To compound matters, he's also super-affable and grateful for all that thirty-seven years of pop stardom has given him.

"The buzz I get from going onstage now is probably even bigger than when Wet Wet Wet started because, unlike then, I fully appreciate what a privileged position it is I'm in," Marti reflects over an afternoon cuppa in Dublin 2's very boutique-y Marlin Hotel. "Music saved me – and other people! – from a life of being a very bad painter and decorator."

While it was slick soul pop songs like ‘Wishing I Was Lucky’, ‘Sweet Little Mystery’, ‘Angel Eyes’ and ‘Temptation’ which made them their millions, Wet Wet Wet actually started life in the early ‘80s as an everything louder than everything else punk band by the name of Vortex Motion.

"My epiphany, if you like, was seeing The Clash in 1978/'79 in the Glasgow Apollo on what I think was the Give 'Em Enough Rope tour," he reminisces fondly. "Don Letts was deejaying and my mind was well and truly blown. The fucking guitar on 'London Calling', 'Lost In The Supermarket' – I love Joe Strummer. Then I got switched on to Buzzcocks, The Slits, Magazine, Joy Division, The Fall's Dragnet album and 'Beasley Street' – 'On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy, beastly Beasley Street' – by John Cooper Clarke. I saw John supporting another hero of mine, Linton Kwesi Johnson, for 75 pence. Not only was punk great of itself, but it also opened the doors for the likes of Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Squeeze and Dire Straits who, believe it or not, used to gig together all the time."

I do and was there to witness it one night in Deptford, Sarf Lahndan.

"Running adjacent to that, I was still listening to stuff like The Isley Brothers' 3 + 3, which was the first record I bought as a kid in '73, and other heavy soul. Then there were the reggae artists that Don Letts and The Clash switched me onto - people like King Tubby, Lee 'Scratch' Perry, The Gladiators and Steel Pulse. You'd think nothing of going to see Eek-A-Mouse or Yellowman. My brother's record collection was Little Feat, Captain Beefheart and the Mothers Of Invention, so that was in the mix too."

Another often forgotten Wet Wet Wet fact is that they very nearly signed to the Greatest Record Label In The World... Ever!

"Initially, we were going to sign to Rough Trade, who I've always loved and admired, but Geoff Travis said, 'Look, I've got this new band called The Smiths that I need to concentrate on.' I was like, 'Fuck!' but he remained a big supporter of Wet Wet Wet. We were massively into Rough Trade acts like Scritti Politti and Robert Wyatt (more of whom anon). We'd also have been very aware of Simple Minds, a fellow Glasgow band who'd started to take off internationally and those Postcard Record acts like The Fire Engines, Josef K and Orange Juice who had this wee Memphis lad, Blair Cunningham, on drums. And look how sophisticated those Public Image records became.

"All these different influences were being fed into us but when I sang, a certain sound came out and our writing leaned more towards music from across the pond. Maybe it was me pushing the band in that direction because, like I say, I loved all that heavy soul."

Marti switched into fanboy overdrive last year with his well-received The Lost Chapter project.

The Lost Chapter was just me wearing my influences on my sleeve," he says. "You know, shooting the breeze about songs I like and that have inspired me – first in a book and then on stage with me and a couple of musicians. It was about entertaining rather than educating, through music and the spoken word."

The personal chord struck on those The Lost Chapter shows extended to the stage set.

"I basically recreated the living-room in my Ma's house growing up," he smiles. "It was the 1970s, so the wallpaper, the carpets – nothing matched. The colour scheme was pure chaos. It must have been a nightmare if you were tripping! I got quite anal about it – 'That's not the right fucking hi-fi!' and spent weeks on eBay piecing it all together. It was a real labour of love."

Marti is bezzies with Chris Difford who, along with his Squeeze bandmate Glenn Tilbrook, might just be the best chronicler of the English condition since Messrs. Lennon and McCartney.

"Without a doubt," he nods. "They're so switched on to what's happening around them socially and politically. However hard I tried, I could never write a song like 'Up The Junction' or Elvis Costello's 'Shipbuilding'. Robert Wyatt did a version of that which, living next to the Clydebank shipbuilding yards, really resonated with me."

Watching the news as a kid with my dad, I loved hearing Jimmy Reid – the trade unionist, not the Jesus & Mary Chain man – kicking against Maggie Thatcher and the rest of the Conservative pricks.

"It's amazing you remember him! His speeches were so powerful that they were quoted in Russia and Poland. Jimmy Reid was one of the leaders of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and organised the fightback against the closures and job losses that threatened to kill my community and others like it. They were totally in the government's face, which we need more of nowadays."

Luckily for the newly rechristened Wet Wet Wet, they signed to Mercury Records at a time when the music industry was still awash with money.

"It was a case of, 'You've got your deal, who do you want to produce?" Marti resumes. "When I came back and said, 'The guy who did those OV Right and Otis Clay records, Willie Mitchell', they were like, 'We don't know him, how about Stock, Aiken & Waterman?' Stock, Aiken & Waterman made some great pop records, but we wanted Willie Mitchell and, thanks to our publisher Joel Stein sending him a tape, we got him."

Marti wasn't long untying himself from his mother's apron strings when he found himself knocking on Willie Mitchell's Memphis door.

"Which, believe it or not, was opened by Bobbie Womack," he chuckles. "Bobby said to Willie, 'There's a boy here to see you' – and I was still a boy with cheekbones like geometry. I didn't look like a Clash fan, that's for certain! We got ushered in and Willie went, 'Oh, I thought you were going to be a lot older...' I was like, 'Er, no.' He then said one of the nicest things anybody has ever said to me, which is, 'I like your imagination.' To get that from someone who'd done seminal work with Al Green... fucking wow! It started a relationship that lasted through till the day he died."

Another massive influence on Wet Wet Wet who's sadly no longer with us is Dubliner Fiachra Tench, a much-garlanded composer and writer for both music and film.

"The first session we did with Fiachra for something, 'Goodnight Girl' possibly, was in 1992. His work on Van Morrison's Poetic Champions Composed blew my mind. And what he did with Paul McCartney, his fellow composer John Newton Howard and Declan O'Rourke, too. It was so tasty! Fiachra was originally a physicist and saw the mathematical shapes to music. I've never met anyone else with his level of imagination. I can honestly say that whenever I received his work, it felt like Christmas Day. Talking of which, he also did the arranging on The Pogues' 'Fairytale Of New York'."

Going off on a complete tangent – I'm doing more and more of that as I get older! – I mention to Marti that I'm the proud owner of one of the Clydebank FC football shirts from the '90s that has 'Wet Wet Wet' emblazoned across the front.

"We were 'bankies, so that was a really proud moment," he enthuses. "One of my favourite players, a man called Davie Cooper, played for Clydebank before moving on to Glasgow Rangers. We lost him early to an aneurysm – I remember going to his funeral and there was a great turn out for him. They nearly became Liffeybank before folding. There was a plan to bring them to Dublin which didn't work out. But, yeah, we sponsored our local football team before Super Furry Animals and The Libertines did!"

Knowing Marti's a Thin Lizzy fan - he previously attended Hot Press' Philip Lynott exhibition in Dublin – I mention that the band's famous logo is currently adorning Bohemian FC's third-kit.

"Wow, really? I'll have to get myself one of those."

Over to you, Bohs...

The fifteen consecutive weeks that Wet Wet Wet spent at number one with their Four Weddings And A Funeral cover of The Troggs’ ‘Love Is All Around’ made them one of the hottest pop properties on the planet and lead to all manner of “Pinch me, am I dreaming?” moments.

"Yeah, like sitting side of stage watching Johnny 'Guitar' Watson and supporting Barry White as a kid," Marti concludes. "Or getting to meet Spock from Star Trek when I was special guest to Elton John in the Hollywood Bowl. Or, again with Elton, singing 'Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting' in Madison Square Garden, tripping over the monitor whilst wearing a kilt and showing everybody my Benny and the Jets!"