‘I tried it, liked it and here I am

STAR LINE-UP: Billy with backing singers Kathleen Turner, Danny Devito and Michael Douglas in the video for When The Going Gets Tough

W‘I was three when I realised I had a voice’

doing it in a lighthearted way.” And despite the album’s title, he’s not trying to provide British Airways with a jingle for its Oneworld alliance programme.

“When I write a song I mess around with a melody, then I think of the lyrics and if it’s ‘Yeah, I like that’ then I develop the theme from there. That particular song just came when I was umming and ahhing the tune. Then I was on a flight, saw the slogan and thought, ‘Wow, what a coincidence’.

“Although I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing,” he says, laughing.

We Gotta Find Love was written before the Black Lives Matter unrest. “I can understand the frustration and the need to call attention to the issues,” he says. “But we’re not talking about something that just happened yesterday; it’s something that’s been going on for 500 years and there are no easy answers.”

Ocean quotes a famous speech given in the 1960s by Haile Selassie I, the emperor of

Ethiopia who was exalted by the Rastafarian movement, about lasting peace remaining a dream “until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race”.

Now a practising Rastafarian, Billy adds: “That is really what we’re dealing with. I believe in his teachings and being Rastafarian helps me in my work and it helps me stay stable.”

Ocean sang from an early age. His mother Violet was a domestic and he recalls fondly: “On Saturday nights she’d be ironing and she’d ask me to sing to her. I was very young, probably three or four, and that’s when I discovered I had a voice.”

His father Hainsley was a musician who composed calypsos on his guitar. “That’s where I got the inspiration to be a musician myself, no doubt about it.” But Hainsley did a variety of jobs (including gardening and fishing) and moved to Romford, Essex, as part of the Windrush generation when Billy was 10, eventually sending for the family to join him.

Used to living next to a coffee plantation, the

WORLDS APART: Billy is ready for action

GOING STRONG: Billy commands the stage in his heyday