EVEN though Charlie Landsborough has always been obsessed with music – he used to sing himself to sleep aged three – it wasn’t until he was 53 that he had his first big hit.

He had started singing on a semi-professional basis in the Sixties while working as a teacher, but only with limited success. That was until the release of What Colour is the Wind – a song about a blind child’s attempts to see the world – in 1994, which went to number one in the Irish charts.

Since then he has remained one of the UK’s top country acts, also being big in Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. Indeed, the late BBC Northern Ireland radio broadcaster and presenter Gerry Anderson said Charlie was like a fine wine and matured with age.

Now at 74, he is still recording and is still touring the world, and has released 11 albums to date. He also has had two number one singles in the Irish pop charts, and several of his albums have topped the British country charts. A few years back he was introduced into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

His next UK tour kicks off on October 7, during which he will be stopping off at Clacton’s West Cliff Theatre two days later.

“I love touring,” he says. “We all get on, all of us in the band, so it’s like travelling with my mates. I travel in a motorhome with my wife and son and, if there is time, get to see parts of the country I would otherwise not see. And my wife didn’t get to come on tour when the kids were little, so she likes to be able to now.

“I love going to Ireland and I love Australia too. The Aussies are smashing people – they’ve got the same sense of humour as us. It reminds me of Ireland but with sun. I love living in Merseyside, where I am from, but if I was ever forced to move, that’s where I would go.”

Charlie was brought up as the youngest of 11 children in the dockland area of Birkenhead, Merseyside, the view from his front window being a “mixture of docks, dumps, railway lines, oil factories and the coal wharf”.

“It sounds grim but my childhood was far from that,” he adds. “I was surrounded by a loving family, animals and, of course, music. My early years were extremely happy. My brothers were all sailors and apart from the guitars and all the music, they brought home gifts from all around the world.

“I was always surrounded by music and my dad told me I used to sing myself to sleep when I was about three. He was a ballad singer billed locally as the Silver Voiced Tenor and one of my earliest recollections is of sitting on his knee at a do and duetting with him on You Take the Tables And I’ll Take the Chairs.

“My mother’s favourites were Gracie Fields and Hank Williams – now there’s a combination. My brothers, of course, were returning from their voyages with the first guitars I’d ever seen and wonderful country music from such artists as Hank Williams, Jimmy Rodgers, Ferlin Husky and Montana Slim.”

Charlie sounds nice.

During our conversation he seems very humble, polite and grateful to be living the life he does and making his passion for music work for him.

“I am,” he says. “It’s thanks to the great support of all the marvellous people we have met all around England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, I have the life in music I had always striven for.”

I ask whether being successful later on in life was a help, from the point of view of songwriting.

“Well, I think so, in the way I have more life experience,” he suggest. “I’ve had a whole host of jobs.”

To be precise Charlie has had a spell in the army, worked as a postman, a grocery store manager, quality control engineer and, finally, a teacher.

“All the time my dreams were of music,” he continues, “and I’ve had all those people making an impression on me.

“I do love songwriting...but I’ve also got a lot of terrible stuff in the drawer.”

In actual fact, Charlie has been widely noted for his lyrics, which tend to have a positive message that appeals to all ages. One school, Logan’s Primary in Motherwell, Scotland, has been so impressed with his songwriting, teachers began to teach the children the words and to make it more interesting, got the kids to dress up as the man himself.

“It was the strangest thing,” says Charlie. “I was in the area on tour one year and I dropped in to see the school unannounced as they’d written to me many times...and there they all were singing my songs.

“It was very touching, particularly as some of them were dressed up as me. I ended up joining in – it was the least I could do!”

• Charlie is at the West Cliff Theatre, Tower Road, Clacton, on Friday, October 9 at 7.30pm. Tickets are £21 available on-line at www.westcliffclacton.co.uk or by calling the box office on 01255 433344.