VIDEO: Watch 10cc legend Graham Gouldman talk to Phil Hewitt/SussexWorld about his Sussex gig

Originally evolving as an opening act at 10cc concerts, featuring band members, Graham’s Heart Full of Songs project has comprised various line-ups over the years. The semi-acoustic, four-piece now returns to its roots with a UK tour in March and a line-up comprising Graham, 10cc’s Iain Hornal and Keith Hayman, plus 10cc production manager Dave Cobby on percussion.

For Graham, it’s a chance to perform the hits he wrote for the Hollies, Yardbirds and Herman’s Hermits among others, along with 10cc classics and other material: “It started when we were doing a 10cc tour and I felt we could use a support act and we didn't have one at the time. I just thought it would be a good idea if I could go out ahead of the band and sing a few songs that I had written in the 1960s for other people and then bring one of the band on and then sing another song and then bring another member of the band out but actually it became an entity in its own right. It just developed naturally. I was kind of undermining 10cc by doing these things beforehand and it just became its own thing. We got requests to do the show and so we called it Heart Full Of Songs.

“I just love doing both, Heart Full Of Songs and 10cc.

"They are very different from one another. Heart Full Of Songs music is much more low profile and much more intimate, and I love the fact that I get to chat about the songs, about where they came from, about the inspiration behind them. it's just really nice and the band that I'm working with are members of 10CC. I just love working with those guys.

“People ask me what it was like to give these songs away, talking as if I'd kind of lost them but that was the whole point. I was writing them for other people. At the time I was a jobbing songwriter in the 1960s and I wrote them to give them away. I was happy to give them away! That was the whole point.”

It was about handing them over: “But if someone is going to make major changes to the song or to the lyrics then I suppose it is polite to ask the writer but I don't really know what the tipping point for that is!

"Morrissey actually recorded a song of mine, not with The Smiths, and he wrote a whole new verse for it. I was very happy with that!”

Inevitably there are some covers of his songs that he likes more than others; some that he likes less than others: “but obviously a gentleman would not say which ones he likes less!”

As for 10cc, they have just got back from a tour of Scandinavia taking in Sweden, Copenhagen and Norway: “We were out there just over two weeks and it was really great. And I just think that the reason it works so well is that we've got the songs."

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the band forming; this year is the 50th anniversary of the band's first album.

“The great thing is the songs have stood the test of time and I don't think you're ever going to hear them played better than you hear them now with us.”