My ecstasy habit was so bad I nearly descended into real-life madness...

turned 50 I thought it was time I was more reflective about my life. It turns out my dad was a big music fan... and a very nice man... but he got mixed up with heroin.”

After the band split in 1986 and his brief time in the wilderness, Suggs, resurrected his career with work as a DJ and TV host. Madness – often referred to as the Nutty Boys – reformed in 1992 and the band are as popular as ever, but Suggs’ current focus is on his 36-date one-man tour, What a King Cnut – A Life in the Realm of Madness, when he’ll be sharing memories from his eventful career. The band’s triumphs include a show-stealing performance at Buckingham Palace for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in

2012, but they were notable by their absence at the Band Aid recording in December 1984.

What happened? The North Londoner says: “I don’t know if we got asked but I remember saying, ‘Bob Geldof ? He couldn’t organise a p*ss up in a brewery’, so we did our own one with The Specials and UB40, called Starvation. It probably generated half a bag of rice.”

He soon got to share a stage with Band Aid star Sting – but it was not your typical collaboration. Suggs says: “I’ve got this thing about invading stages and Sting was playing at Henley and I was going down the river and there he was.”

He adds: “I heard Sting, one of the greatest British lyricists of all time doing a sound check to De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da... so up I got before I was unceremoniously hauled off stage by my ankles.”

Even more excruciating was his brush with his musical hero David Bowie. “It was the mid-80s and we are driving through France and [Madness producer Clive Langer] went, ‘Bowie has rung up... we can stay at his house’. So I am with my family, and Clive’s family in the Range Rover with all the suitcases on the roof.

“We get to his estate; David Bowie’s f***ing James Bond-esque lair on the top of the mountain. There he is, the Man Who Fell to Earth, beckoning us into his garage. Then we hear a crunch as our suitcases fall off the roof and my underwear is blowing around his driveway.

“Was it clean or dirty? A bit of both sadly. It was all OK in the end but it wasn’t the most auspicious way to meet the man I’d loved for most of my life, scrabbling round on the floor picking up my pants and socks.”

His underwear-related disasters are in the past but there’s more madness to come. “The film is about how I got to the top. The one-man show is going to be all about what happens when you get there. That’s when it gets really scary.”

My Life Story is at cinemas now. Suggs’ one-man show What a King Cnut runs from January 31 to March 22.