His all-action shows always include special guests to sing a range of songs and his latest tour is no different.

There will be a special guest making a one-off appearance at The Sands Centre when Jools Holland appears on June 30.

The showman explained: “What has evolved with the big band and their shows is, of course, the guests.

“Ruby Turner has become part of the orchestra because of the strength of what she does and because we’ve written so much together. So she finishes off the show but is so amazing, she’s like a person from another age, in having that gospel and blues and boogie-woogie sensibility that was around in the 1930s, that beginnings of it and the greatest flowering of it, in many ways.

“So she has that sensibility, so we close the set with her because she just lifts everything up, and it’s the perfect person for the orchestra. And I realise when we’re playing the songs, more than half the songs we play are all the ones Ruby and I have written, because when we’re writing, we know what we’re writing for, we’re writing for the audience that are watching us, that are going to be at gigs. We’re not sitting in a room thinking ‘What would people on the radio like?’ It’s ‘What would people in the gig like?’

“So that’s a staple part of it, and also Louise Marshall is an incredible singer who’s been part of us, who’s fantastic at singing some of the songs that I’ve written with other people.

“She’s great at bringing to life songs that I’ve written with people that I couldn’t bring to life myself. And also, she just has this way of this energy of bringing things to life and is a brilliant backing vocalist. So she’s a special part.

“We also on this tour have other different backing singers like Mabel Ray and other people who will bring great things to it. But then we have the special guests, and they’re the ones that change all the time which bring another element again. We had Marc Almond, we had José Feliciano, we had Solomon Burke, we’ve had some amazing people with us come out as guests over the years. Alison Moyet, we had, and Lulu and people.

“And this year, we’re having somebody who’s worked with us before, but they bring out this great element of us, which is Selecter. Specifically, it’s Pauline Black, the singer, and ‘Gaps’ Hendrickson, who works with Pauline, and they’re perfect for us because they represent the British take on ska music, the 2 Tone thing.

“Although I wasn’t part of the 2 Tone thing, I was part of British ska music, that’s part of my heritage and part of the thing my orchestra have been doing for the past 25 years, so we’ve always been playing that music.

“So it’s perfect for us and the effect they have on the audience, it’s like everybody jumps up straight away, as soon as they hear them doing ‘Train To Skaville,’ it’s just like such great music, and they do it so fantastically, and with a particular British take on it, which is great.

“It’s really electric to hear them doing it, and they are the originators of that British take on ska music, like Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones were the originators of British blues, in one sense of it, they are the originators of British 2 Tone ska. So it’s great having them there, and they like being with the orchestra because being with a whole big band, it magnifies it and makes it even bigger, and has just a fantastic jump up effect.

“Also, I’m very proud of my British pop music history and credentials, because you know, I started off with Squeeze, as did Gilson Lavis of course, the drummer in Squeeze, who’s there, who gets better and better, and Chris Difford, who I’ve written with quite a lot, different things over the years, but also he comes as a guest with us, and it’s great when he’s with us, because there’s something very, what’s the word for it, very laddish that comes out when we play with it.

“There’s a great life that comes out, so it’s always a joy. So Chris Difford is playing with us in Carlisle and I think it’s the only one on this tour, he comes out with us sometimes for the whole tours, but it’s the only one on this particular one that he’s able to do, and we’re delighted to have him there, it’s always a treat to see Chris and his magnificence, and strutting his stuff. So when Chris is there we play a couple of old Squeeze songs. I think if he does ‘Cool For Cats,’ he says ‘Here’s the song that paid for my first divorce.’ I’m giving too many trade secrets away now, but he’s great on stage and doing that music, and again that transfers into, I suppose there’s me and Gilson playing on it, and him, so that’s three-quarters of it, I suppose.

“With the guests, you want it to be people that you feel you’re going to enjoy being on tour with, and they’re going to enjoy it and be part of it, and somebody that gets the broadness of the music we’re doing. Some people make great music, but would it really fit in with us? I don’t know, but I think we’ve been very lucky to have people, for instance, somebody like Alison Moyet, she makes all sorts of records, she’s like a great big band singer, so she could do that.

“The different people we’ve worked with over the years, it’s been great.

“We just had a year with Marc Almond, who was great and we did a record with him. But it’s also quite an enjoyable challenge for some of the guests, because they don’t always work with a big band, and so it’s a different dynamic, and they have to be pretty strong to be at the front of a big band, they’ve got to be pretty tough and confident to get in and be able to deliver the strength of what they do over a big band.

“So I think they enjoy doing it, and also it’s quite nice for them, because they just come out and do four or five songs, and then...rest! [laughs]”