SATURDAY afternoon in a Dorchester tea room and Billy Bragg is as hungry as ever, for music, politics, love and justice... and cake.

Between mouthfuls of a rich fruit number and sips of tea he’s looking to the future, making sense of the past and finding his way in the present.

Next year marks 30 years since the then 23-year-old Essex boy joined the Army, instantly regretted it, and bought himself out after three months.

Less than two years later, his debut album, Life’s a Riot With Spy Vs Spy, was released.

Coming on like a one-man Clash, his angry guitar and rough-hewn vocals set him apart from the synthesiser sheen that graced the glossy pop hits of the day.

By the time the follow up, Brewing Up with Billy Bragg arrived a year later, his blend of left wing politics, perceptive social commentary and heart-wrenching romanticism had crystalised and one of English music’s most intriguing careers was underway.

A quarter of a century later, the 52-year-old Billy Bragg is going out on tour yet again (including a date at the O2 Academy, Bournemouth, on December 12), and reflecting on the young man with a big mouth who shares his name.

“When we did the box set a couple of years ago, it included a DVD of the South Bank Show I made very early on. They sent me the tape of it, and I was secretly dreading this younger version of me would be saying the worst possible thing that could happen is I’d be living in a big house by the sea in Dorset, driving a 4x4 with a big shaggy dog!

“Fortunately the younger me was much more in tune with where I am now, which was very encouraging. I may not have lived up to everything he spoke about, but I don’t think I let him down.”

Billy has lived in Burton Bradstock, near Bridport, for the best part of a decade. The sea air and muddy field walks suit him, but his political ire is undimmed by the passage of time.

This year alone he has taken a stand against bankers’ bonuses, refusing to pay taxes in protest; campaigned against the BNP in his native Barking (“they’re a busted flush now, gone, but it was close, too close”); and written songs for a new stage play called Pressure Drop.

And he’s still explaining why he voted Liberal Democrat in West Dorset at the election.

“There is consistency in my position, because I was talking about voting Liberal Democrat to stop the Tories. Now I’m saying oppose the Liberal Democrats to stop the Tories.

“The internet has been very good, because it has allowed people to voice their opinion, and it has allowed me to refute it – and I’ll probably have to keep doing that for a bit!”

But while other musicians of his vintage are content to gently stroll towards their autumn years, Billy Bragg has been busy.

These days, he’s a thriving cottage industry with a website that acts as a virtual farm gate where you can buy music and merchandise straight from source, get free downloads and find out what’s going on.

He’s enthusiastically active on Facebook and Twitter as well.

“There’s not a huge amount of space for me in places like New Musical Express, and I don’t really fit into Heat or any of those hairdresser magazines. So how do you connect with your audience to the extent you can make a living doing it?

“Some of the stuff I posted this year when we were fighting the BNP in Barking was getting a quarter of a million hits. That’s more than the NME at its height, so it makes more sense for me to be posting stuff on Facebook rather than expecting to get the attention of the daily papers.

“But I’ll tell you this – I’ve never worked harder.”

And there’s no let up. Next year he’s off to Los Angeles to make an album with Roseanne Cash and producer Joe Henry, and the following year he’s lining up the reissues of the Mermaid Avenue project in which he and US roots rockers Wilco wrote music for unpublished Woody Guthrie lyrics.

“That was a really amazing thing to be part of. We recorded shed loads of stuff, about 50 different tracks, so we’re finally going to try to do a complete Mermaid Avenue for Woody’s centenary in 2012.”

Meanwhile, it’s back to basics – getting on stage and providing a tonic for the troops.

“You can’t escape getting older, and I find myself touching on broader subjects. For instance, I’ve been talking a lot about cynicism, and that being our real enemy.

“When you’re younger, you don’t see the cynicism. Your ideas are bright and shiny, and it just washes off. But cynicism gathers in those small places and, like rust, it never sleeps.

“I’m talking about people who have given up – and they want you to give up, but we can’t.

“It is going to be hard, and a lot of it ain’t going to work. But ultimately you’ve got to keep faith in where we’re going.

“I keep faith in people.”