My right to remain silent...

Singer says it’s not his style to reveal why he quit his role with Spandau Ballet

Tony Hadley will always be known as the face and voice of Spandau Ballet. Although he fronted the comeback that began in 2009, he left the chart-smashing North London New Romantics last year but still performs the hits that made the band famous.

A year after his departure, Hadley, 58, remains tight-lipped about his reasons for quitting.

“I’ve never announced a specific reason why I left, and I’m not going to,” he says. “One day I might say, who knows. I don’t know. But I don’t do cheap shots.

“You know, I could increase my social media standing by saying yes, I’m going to do an exclusive to say exactly why I left. But that’s not my style.”

Spandau’s 2009 reunion followed an acrimonious court case. “Through all that period and the court case I never actually officially resigned from the band.

“We managed to sort of bury the hatchet as much as we could without killing each other. And you know, it was good, everything was pretty hunky-dory, I thought.

“It’s never an easy decision to quit permanently. It wasn’t something I set out to do, but a set of circumstances came about and I felt I had no option.”

Not that Hadley is worried – his unmistakable foghorn runs through Spandau’s catalogue and any song he sings is like lettering on a stick of rock.

Before Spandau appointed young actor singer Ross William Wild in Hadley’s place, he thought that Marti Pellow would be the best person to take over.

As for himself, he’s happy performing 80s revival shows with pals such as Kim Wilde and ABC’s Martin Fry. “We always want to do better shows than everybody else,” he says. “I mean, back in the day, you’re competitive in terms of your chart position and we’re still competitive now, but all great friends as well.”

With Hadley’s outspoken Tory Party-supporting views and Spandau’s outlandish fashion sense, the group attracted detractors as well as fans.

But he insists the claim from New Order’s Bernard Sumner that he doused Hadley in a certain liquid when they performed an early 80s gig in Paris was pure wishful thinking.

“He was bigging himself up, because we were all quite big lads, and we never took any prisoners,” says Hadley. “So he would have been a silly boy if he’d done that. You don’t come out of The Angel, Islington, with no battle scars.”

New album Talking To The Moon is out now. Tony’s UK tour starts on October 8. Get the details at tonyhadley.com