Making sense of Suggs

Suggs - long-time Madness frontman - tries to make sense of it all in Live Suggs which tours to the Theatre Royal Brighton on Tuesday, May 31 at 7.45pm (0871 230 1552).

It’s a show born in the aftermath of his 50th birthday, but triggered, he says, by the death of his cat.

“It was a sequence of events that got me thinking, really. I had the build up to being 50 quite sorted. I hadn’t really thought about it other than it being a number, and I had the birthday party the night before. It was the following day that it hit me. I was slightly hung-over and I was lying in the bath when I heard a big crash. My cat fell off the shelf and died.

“It wasn’t ancient, but I had had him for a long time, a really beautiful cat who would catch ten mice a day. He was on my mind. There was something so strangely poignant about this strange furry creature dying that really got me going.

“I was having a chat with a cab driver and he said that I looked a bit glum. I said to him that I had just turned 50, and he said ‘You don’t want to worry about that!’ I told him that my kids had just left home. He said he couldn’t wait to see the back of his! And then I said after a couple of minutes that my cat had died. He pulled the car over and nearly started crying. His cat had died. He had had to take it indoors in a black big bag. People were asking him what it was. It was awful for him.”

All of which set Suggs thinking - not that he is worried about falling off the shelf himself. As he says, he’s done that three or four times already.

It’s just that for some reason it took him back to his upbringing, which was tough. “Interesting is the word people would use!

“I was talking to my mum after this pet therapy cab driver, and it’s that British thing about you don’t really talk about your emotions. I discovered so much about her life. But I didn’t know anything about my father. He left when I was three. I assumed that he had just died after that, but that’s the narrative thread to this show, just trying to find out what happened to him.

“I knew it was going to be an emotional rollercoaster. I knew he was a heroin addict. He left when I was three. I didn’t hold him in the highest regard! But for me, it was time to tackle some of this stuff.”

What he found out will be in the show.

So did the absence of a dad make him a better dad himself?

“I have got daughters, and daughters love their dad. They certainly love their mum, but as a dad you don’t have to worry about being their role model. You can be their mate. The mum deals with all the emotional turmoil!

“But certainly the driving force for my marriage was love for my wife and for the kids”, Suggs says - rather than consciously trying to compensate for what he hadn’t had himself.

“But unconsciously, I can imagine that it was a motivation for me that previous generations of my family hadn’t exactly been wildly successful in family life!”