Big in Beirut

He holds little truck with most of the bands on the current British music scene, saying that he doesn't feel part of the same industry. "I'm quite sure that some of these new young bucks would look at someone like me and say, 'God, what a boring old fart.' However, they'd give their right arms for the 45 million record sales and the worldwide recognition and, most important, a 34-year career."

Does he ever become frustrated about the way he is portrayed in the UK? "You get pigeonholed. It's a kind of safety device for people who don't really want to look any further outside of the box, but I'm actually impregnable as far as what people say about me. I don't give a toss," he says.

De Burgh's relationship with the press has been fraught over the years. In the mid-Nineties there was a tabloid expose of his relationship with his children's babysitter - he has three children and his marriage to their mother, Diane, is "rock solid" - then when his daughter Rosanna won Miss World in 2003, there were suggestions in some quarters that his fame had somehow influenced the judges' decision. His response? To employ an excellent lawyer. "I never sued anybody until they started being rude about my daughter."

His plans for the next year include turning 60 - "I'm not mad about having a wild celebration, it's just a number" - and going to Iran for the first time. He has recorded a song with The Arian Band, an Iranian outfit who have invited him to perform in their country. "I've been to places as an initiator before. I'd been to South Africa during the Seventies, when it was definitely not kosher to go there. I felt that the best thing to do was to be a missionary and tell people what was going on in their own country because censorship was so dreadful," he says. "I don't think complete cutting off achieves anything, that's why I want to go to Iran. You're bringing a message from the outside world, you might change something. It's the idea of a vast number of mostly young people who are yearning for something and if you can give it to them, why not?"

The following evening, de Burgh is backstage preparing for his TV appearance and is strumming his guitar contemplatively. He's doing three songs - "Live for the Day" with Yamout; "One World", a cheesy- but-uplifting tune that sees de Burgh punching the air regularly, and "High on Emotion", which de Burgh describes as a stonking rock song but is a little nearer the middle of the road than that. He gets a huge cheer from the audience, especially when he greets the slinky hostess in halting Arabic. He comes backstage flushed with success and is accosted by a stunning Lebanese woman with a toddler. She asks if she can take a picture of him with her daughter. He poses and the mother is overjoyed. "When she grows up and sees that she had her picture taken with Chris de Burgh, she'll be so excited."

'Now and Then' is out now on Universal

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