He danced his way through the 80s in a beige raincoat, and became a cult figure to millions worldwide through a viral internet campaign – and over twenty years later, RICK ASTLEY is still recording, and performing to audiences in their thousands. Breakfast Club presenter Jeremy Durrant caught up with Rick ahead of a gig in Ipswich.

You’ve had eight top ten hits, hit the number one spot in countries all over the world, and picked up a BRIT Award along the way – what are you most proud of after all these years?
I think it’s that I’m relatively sane – after the four or five years I had [making music], the fact I walked away with my sanity – I’m most proud of that.

So why did you walk away in the 90s?
To honest, I think I’d had enough of it really. When success comes the way that it did with me, it really is quite daunting – some people are born to do that, and if I’m born to do anything it’s the singing part and not the being a popstar part! Some people handle it a lot better, and enjoy it more – as great as it was, the times I had were amazing, but after a while it just didn’t seem enough to warrant to have the energy to keep doing. There’s always someone else coming along, ready to do absolutely anything it takes!

Is there any truth in the rumour that before you brought out Never Gonna Give You Up that you worked as a teaboy at the record label?
Kind of – I signed a production deal with Pete Waterman and they had a few records that they were in the middle of making – one for Dead or Alive, I think they were about to sign Mel n’ Kim – and Pete realised that I was going to get bored pretty rapidly. I was only 19 at the time! He asked if I wanted to come down to London, hang out and learn the ropes, see how they do it – and within all of that, my duties involved making tea and getting the sandwiches!

You stepped back from the music scene in the 90s, but now you’re very much back with us – back on tour, bringing records out – what made you make that step to get back into it all?
I’ve done bits and bobs over the years, but nothing formal, as it were – and I don’t really want to recreate any of that to be honest. I went to Japan a few years back to do some gigs and – if I’m honest – I was doing it for the money and because it was a great trip! My daughter really wanted to go as she was studying fashion and design, and my partner Lena really wanted to go as well – so the three of us just wanted to get a trip out of it! And they were going to pay me a lot of money…! [laughs] I just thought it’d be a one-off: I’ll do my old songs again, I’ll never probably do it again – but I really enjoyed it! Maybe it was because I was really jetlagged and on the other side of the world – but something made me realise I could have a bit of fun with it. It’s never going to take over my life again the way it did when I was twenty-one – this time I can pick and choose a bit and have a bit more fun with it. I’ve never fallen out of love with music, I just fell out of love with the music business.

You became something of an internet sensation a couple of years ago – what was this thing called ‘Rickrolling’?
It’s basically where somebody sends you a link to something on an email, and when you click the link, it’s not what you thought it was. You thought you might be seeing the winning goal in the FA Cup Final, but what you get is the video for Never Gonna Give You Up – my first single. Someone in America started it I think, and I think it was pretty massive there. On April Fool’s Day on YouTube, every link you clicked on the front page, you got Rickroll’d and it went to Never Gonna Give You Up – I’m not knocking it, it was a bit of fun! Forgive the pun, I just rolled with it.

How did your daughter react to your fame?
She’s suitably embarrassed and suitably proud of me at the same time, about 50:50 – and that’s how all kids should be about their parents. But the Rickrolling thing – I think she ignored it, I don’t know whether for her age group it was a big thing or not but I’m sure she’s been Rickroll’d a few times! She’s never been phased by the fact that I used to be what I call ‘proper famous’. By the time I packed it in, she was about two years old, so she didn’t really grow up with me being proper famous, she just knew that people knew who I was, and that I was in the paper every day.

Looking back at the video for Never Gonna Give You Up, what happened to the beige raincoat you wore?
That beige raincoat was stolen from me in Northern Ireland at an open air concert that I did – I was doing a few interviews backstage and they didn’t have much security. I got mobbed, the radio DJ got mobbed – and they literally pulled things off of us, and that raincoat just went! It’s a funny thing, I’ve threatened to find a raincoat like that and wear it a couple of times and one day I may do! Someone probably walked round for a good six months doing the Astley shuffle in that raincoat in Northern Ireland somewhere!