Manchester Evening News, Saturday, November 12, 2011 He is confident in front of 2,000 fans, but embarrassed with a solitary stranger in a lift. He looks for inspiration to Noel Coward, but also to Kanye West. To his friends and family, he's Raymond, but to us he's Gilbert O'Sullivan. Paul Taylor talks to him "I don't look back. I don't look at myself. If I hear records of mine on the radio, I'll turn it off' Hurray for Ray or should that be for Gilbert? By Paul Taylor Hello Gilbert ... or should that be Raymond? I'm momentarily flummoxed as to whether I should be addressing this venerable songwriter by the name with which he was christened in Waterford, Ireland Raymond Edward O'Sullivan or by the stage name under which he became one of the most popular songwriters in the 1970s. Gilbert O'Sullivan? It's not so much a name as a bit of word play. But then Gilbert ... Raymond ... whatever, likes a little word-play. You may not be as good as you think you are, but thinking you are is good, he says. See what he did there? His very best album was titled with the mischievous Spoonerism of The Berry Vest of Gilbert O'Sullivan. There has been an album called Piano Foreplay, another called Singer Sowing Machine, a song called You Can't Con-crete. Gilbert likes words, that's obvious, and it's no surprise that he admits a soft spot for that most deft of wordsmiths Noel Coward. It seems apt that the singer is also a mate of comedian Harry Hill, who reads a Milligan-esque poem written by O'Sullivan on his latest album Gilbertville. So what's it to be Gilbert or Raymond? It's like two people, he says. You're a character and then you're the private person, the scruff at heart and the performer on stage. It's a nice contrast. I am basically a shy person but in front of 2,000 people, no problem, I'm very confident, singing my songs for two and a half hours. I really enjoy it. I go off stage, and I meet someone in the lift and I get embarrassed, shy. Because you're no longer that person. You're Mr Normal. Despite that professed shyness, O'Sullivan has always had a healthy arrogance when it came to his work. Someone had to like it, he says. There's an awful lot of people who are never successful because they lack that self-belief. They need someone else to say they are good. That's a danger. O'Sullivan's recording output now may be what he describes as a cottage industry, but at his most commercially successful, his Back To Front album held Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon off the top of the chart in 1973. Many of the 1970s songs were, and are, timelessly wonderful. His very first 1970 hit Nothing Rhymed was a soaring, poetic hymn of bewilderment. Alone Again (Naturally) wrapped a lifetime of hurt in the sweetest of tunes. And these songs were sung by a young man with pudding basin haircut, dressed as if had just stepped out of a Hovis advert. O'Sullivan was a teen scream just like Donny Osmond and David Cassidy, though perhaps for a more thoughtful type of teenage girl. Invited to share his thoughts now on that giddy era, O'Sullivan is disappointingly reticent. I don't look back. I don't look at myself, he says. If I hear records of mine on the radio, I'll turn it off. I'm very pleased with what happened. I'm really happy at the way my career developed, and I'm proud of the image I created, despite the knocks I get for it, and I'm pleased to have done something different. And, in concert, within the two-and-a-half hours is everything from the old to the new to the in-between. But I dwell on what I can do in the future. The I love you' scenario can never get boring. Perhaps part of O'Sullivan's reluctance to look back is the unhappy postscript to those glory years. After parting company with his record label boss Gordon Mills whose daughter Clair had been the subject of one of O'Sullivan's best-known songs the singer sued for unpaid royalties, and was awarded £7m by a court in 1982. O'Sullivan would never again be a contender for the top of the UK charts, but there was a steady output of new material for a loyal fanbase, including a strong following in Japan, where he did top the charts for several weeks in 1994. It's nice when it happens, but why ... how? I've no idea, says O'Sullivan. Obviously I'd like to be selling more. I'd like to be selling hundreds of thousands. But I'm no longer losing any sleep over that. I'm happy with the work. What I can control is the writing and recording. After that, it's up to the public. Home is in Jersey. O'Sullivan is married to Norwegian-born Aase and they have two grown-up daughters. At 64, O'Sullivan is just as passionate about his craft as ever before. I'm disciplined. When I'm in writing mode it's nine to five. Discipline is very important, especially when you get older. O'Sullivan can reel off a list of contemporary singer-songwriters who interest him The Pierces, Teddy Thompson, Nerina Pallot, Rumer. And he listens to Lady Gaga or Kanye West to stay abreast of production techniques, just as he will listen to old movie soundtracks from the 1930s for melodic sustenance. Elton does it you buy every CD out because you want to see if you can learn anything, keep up with what's going on. But some of his contemporaries have stopped listening to or being enthused by what is on the radio, O'Sullivan says. Paul Simon is as good a lyricist today as he ever was, but I think melodically he's not as strong, says O'Sullivan. That's what you need to do if you're our generation of songwriter and you want to be prolific. You have to work hard to get the melody. Maybe some people just don't want to work that hard. The reason that Neil Diamond, James Taylor and songwriters of our generation record covers albums is perhaps they're losing that thing of being disciplined. Coincidentally, one of Diamond's most recent covers is of O'Sullivan's Alone Again (Naturally). The original version spent six weeks at the top of the American chart and has since been covered by legions of artists, including Sarah Vaughan, Andy Williams, Nina Simone, Shirley Bassey and Elton John and the Pet Shop Boys. With Neil Diamond's version, he sent me a really nice letter to see what I thought of it, and I wrote back and said it was very interesting, very stripped-down, very basic, says O'Sullivan. I credit anyone who records any of my songs as a positive. I don't dismiss or analyse, I accept. It's a very nice thing for people to want to do. Gilbert O'Sullivan plays at the Opera House, Manchester, on Tuesday. His latest album Gilbertville is out on Hypertension-Music. 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