Q: You’re a regular with your band on the big festival circuit.

How different will it feel playing solo?

A: We’ve gone festival mad over the past few years, including five years on the trot at Glastonbury, so it’s going to be very different for me. Working solo here for the first time will give me a different perspective and I’ll have to come up with different ideas. I’m looking forward to the challenge.

Q: We hear you were camping with friends here on the South Coast in June.

A: I love it. I spent some time writing for my second album in a lovely cottage in Corfe Castle. I love the sea too and it’s a fantastic area.

Q: Do you like roughing it or are you a ‘glamper’?

A: I’m totally fine in a twoman tent with a blanket, but if someone were to offer me a yurt with candles and a rug, it would be rude to say no!

Q: Do you get the chance to enjoy festivals before and after your gig?

A: Generally with the big events, you tend to spend a lot of time backstage because they make it so comfortable for you! I really love my anonymity and keep my head down, but I’m looking forward to the more intimate environment .

Q: Jools Holland’s also playing Wickham . How important was that 2004 slot on his Later show?

A: It wasn’t a matter of grabbing the moment as there was no sense of the gravity of the situation at the time. It was such a pivotal moment for me.

But what’s really weird is that even though there was no YouTube then, so many people seem to have seen it. Lots of people have good things happen after that show, but it was a real rocket launch for me.

Q: You’ve had a few strong things to say about TV talent shows. Has The Voice changed your mind?

A: “I just don’t like the idea that someone sits in a chair and tells you you’re doing something wrong, because there isn’t a right or wrong. There isn’t necessarily good and bad, because there will be stuff I think is terrible that someone else likes.

Q: So it’s a no to Simon Cowell’s call then?

A: I just feel totally repulsed by them. They’re probably great television, but as a musician, I find them abhorrent.

People have said to me that watching them is the only time their whole family gets together to watch the telly, which I find very, very sad.”

Q: You didn’t grow up in a musical family, so where did the urge to play come from?

A: It was definitely a compulsive, internal thing. Mum showed me lots of pictures I’d drawn of guitars before I started school, but I didn’t even pick one up until I was 15. But I was asking my Mum and Dad for a piano when I was four.

They wondered why I couldn’t just learn the recorder, but they finally gave in and I just launched myself into it.