MADNESS are back on the road, embarking on a summer tour to include all the country's biggest sporting venues - including the home of Gloucestershire cricket, the Bristol County Ground, and Gloucester Rugby, Kingsholm Stadium in Gloucester.

The tour will be a trip down sporting memory lane for lead vocalist Suggs, who first began exploring the UK as a Chelsea supporter before Madness first hit the road in 1979.

“It’ll be the greatest tour since Boudacia. We’ll be going across the countryside rampaging and pillaging. We have our people working on designing a chariot - even as we speak,” he laughs .

“If you had told me this when I was a kid I’d have laughed so loudly my socks would have flown off. Of course it’s remarkable and a privilege to still be doing this funny old business that we do.”

Madness have managed to accrue a whole new generation by playing 40 or 50 festivals over the past five years, allowing many different ages to get to enjoy the band.

"It’s been very flattering," says Suggs. "I think the reason we endure is that we genuinely do enjoy ourselves. From the very beginning you could see the joy in the early videos we made and hear it in the records.

"The fact that we were friends before this band started is key. I genuinely think the whole spark or art of craft and creativity was a by-product of our friendship. I think that’s what people feel. It’s a genuine experience. It’s not manufactured. I can’t ever remember being onstage and feeling fed up with the people around me."

"Each tour we do we try and make unique – and special. This one’s special as no one has ever done something like this – as big as this – at sporting venues like this. It’s a Madness madcap idea and we know people will respond to it."

And while the country teeters on the cusp of the whirlpool of 80s nostalgia, Madness have continued to write new material to be performed alongside classics that everyone knows, such as' House of Fun', 'Baggy Trousers' and 'My Girl'.

"We could have quite happily stopped flapping our flippers and slipped gently down into the hole with everybody else," says Suggs. "But we flapped and flapped like mad and tried to write what we thought would be an album to stand with anything else we’ve done which I think we did. "

Madness come to Gloucester's Kingsholm Stadium on May 30 and Bristol's County Ground (home of Gloucestershire County Cricket Club) on September 12. For more details and tickets visit www.grandslammadness.co.uk