BEFORE Westlife, before Take That there was Wet Wet Wet, a band of good-looking Glasgow lads who have sold 15million records in their time.

Well now the boys are men – I am shocked to learn that lead singer Marti Pellow is the same age as me – and like all of us in the Fab at Fifty Club they can’t really understand how they got here because they still feel so young.

“Although in years I’m different and my hair is greyer I feel the same age as when I was starting out, so that’s what it’s about, creating the excitement,” says bassist Graeme Clarke.

The excitement in Bournemouth kicks off at the BIC on Wednesday, March 2, 2016, when the Wet Wet Wet bandwagon rolls into town.

Fans will be treated to all the best songs from Picture This, plus the Wets’ not inconsiderable back catalogue.

“We were blessed to have 30-odd chart songs, several number ones and we have a great repertoire which spans decades,” says Graeme.

“We’ve always had great support from radio and that’s why we’ve never gone away.”

For him the excitement comes from ‘the challenge in writing a song’, including the ones they’ve written for this tour.

“It’s like turning the key to a door; it’s a challenge, it’s a bit of a puzzle trying to work a song out and even when you do work it out, you wonder are people going to like it.”

He reckons that songs ‘start in your bedroom’. “You kind of think, ‘will they stay here?’ and sometimes they do, but other times they come out and go everywhere.

“You like to think something is the best song you’ve ever written but when you play it to someone and they are like, ‘Is there anything on TV just now’ you wonder if it is all that good!”

It is, he says, ‘like building a house from the inside’. “You go outside and see it and think ‘I wish I could have that differently’.”

Lead singer Marti Pellow agrees.

“These songs have a life, you put them out and people embrace them with much gusto or they don’t and you’re powerless over that,” he says.

“But I’ll tell you that no one really sets out to write a number 27 song. I mean, you’re not saying let’s aim for top 50 when you write.

“You write a song and if it goes on a journey that people embrace then the job’s a good one.”

They are best-known for Love Is All Around, their cover of The Troggs’ classic, which is the song to have stayed second longest at number one in the UK, behind Bryan Adams’ ‘Everything I Do’.

But self-penned music includes Wishing I Was Lucky and Sweet Surrender and fans will be hearing these old favourites at the BIC gig.

“New songs, and we’ve written some, do add excitement to a concert,” says Marti, but: “We’re not into coming in and saying sorry, we’re going to play a new album here for the next 45 minutes, which would disillusion the fans,” he says.

The success of the Picture This album, will also be celebrated before the tour kicks off, with a digitally remastered release, plus a DVD and outtakes and during the concert they’ll be playing its hit tunes, many of which echo their admiration for influences which include Marvin Gaye and Al Green.

Perhaps because of this their music has been described as ‘soft rock’ but is that fair?

Not really, according to Marti, who regards labels such as this as slightly lazy journalism. “Fair enough but you really have got to take it with a pound of salt,” he says, explaining that the band grew musically.

“Music is so eclectic and when we started listening to stuff from that era, and when it translated into our imaginations; how we perceived it was Wet Wet Wet, not how other people perceived it, not translations of it. We’re always growing.”

As he says, the Wets are trying to create something unique.

“That’s why we’ve lasted, we’ve created something unique and kept going in different directions.”

And with an estimated five million fans having already seen them perform, who could bet against them packing out the BIC with yet a few thousand more?

  • bic.co.uk