Feargal Sharkey: “Why I will never sing on stage again.”

Watch Neil McCormick's Needle Time Tuesday 10pm, repeated Saturday at 7pm.

Feargal Sharkey says there is no chance of him ever reuniting with the Undertones or singing on stage again. “The idea of going back out there, doing festivals and trying to tour properly - absolutely not, under any circumstances. I just have no ambition in that at all.”

In a candid interview for Vintage TV with Telegraph music critic Neil McCormick, the former singer with legendary Northern Irish punk pop group The Undertones admits that he gave up a successful solo career in 1991 because it was taking too much out of him. “It sounds kind of pathetic in many ways,” admits the 54-year-old, “but emotionally I put a collosal amount into it, and I just felt I could not go on making that kind of intellectual and emotional investment anymore.” He also describes having “a recurring nightmare, waking up in the middle of the night realising that pretty quickly I could be 55-years-old, with receding hairline and a ponytail, still deluding myself that I might be on Top Of The Pops one more time, singing Teenage Kicks.”

Sharkey went on to have a career on the other side of the music industry, as a record company executive with Polydor, because he had to “develop some kind of other interest and some kind of other career in life that would motivate me to get out of bed in the morning”. He was a member of the Radio Authority for five years and in 2004 became known as the Labour government's “Live Czar”, in his role as head of a Live Music Forum.

From 2008 to 2011 he was head of UK Music, an organisation representing the collective interests of the British music industry. More recently, he has taken time off to concentrate on personal family matters but is ready to get back into the fray, although he admits he doesn't know in what capacity. Sharkey claims to have identified a recurring pattern in his life, “where I just go, 'I don't know what I'm going to do next but I can't do this anymore.” He likens it to “holding his nose, taking a deep breath and stepping off a cliff.”

Although he has little contact with his former band members, he is still involved in the Undertones as a rights holder, and is happy to promote yet another re-release of their Greatest Hits. Just don't expect him to actually perform them. “Do I still sing? Yes. But that's predominantly because it just annoys my children,” Sharkey jokes. “It allows me to stand there and remind them of how ungrateful they are that some people used to pay to listen to me do this, and they get it for bloody free.”

Watch the preview for this week's Needle Time with Feargal Sharkey....