SHEFFIELD’S Dave Berry is best remembered for The Crying Game, the mournful sixties hit which became the theme to a nineties hit movie.

His career spans several decades, and when he plays the Caroline Club in Saltaire on Friday, along with his hits, he will bring bags of experience and stagecraft with him. “My act was always visual, and still is” says Dave.

He started wearing black back in the sixties - “I was doing a Gene Vincent” - but his act soon became very distinctive.

“I took the mic off the stand. It sounds strange but I’d seen some ballet, and I’d seen some mime artists and it just developed. Stan Laurel, he came into it as well, when I’d scratch my head. It wasn’t meant to be taken too seriously, but when I talk to people now they say when they were young it used to scare them a bit. It was a mixture of all different things.

In the sixties Dave Berry and the Cruisers would play on package tour shows at St George’s Hall. “I remember all the kids going crazy. The first time we played was with Dusty Springfield, Brian Poole & the Tremeloes and the Searchers. We only played three or four songs. The Cruisers were a young band, 18, 19, and they had to back Dusty - they only had a week’s notice! They’d never backed anyone apart from me, their mate who lived round the corner. They couldn’t read music, so they just had to listen to a record of I Only Want To Be With You and learn it.”

Dave had big hits of his own with The Crying Game, Little Things, This Strange Effect and Mama, but by the seventies the hits had stopped. He was surprised at one show in 1976 to see punks in the crowd.

“They came in the dressing room afterwards and my first question was ‘why are you here?’ They looked completely out of place. But they were the ones who told me the Sex Pistols were doing No Lip, a song which had been on the b-side of The Crying Game. And then Adam Ant gave me a namecheck on I think his first album, as early influence. So he just contacted me and said do you want to do a couple of shows? Amazing.”

The Cruisers these days are a young, exciting band - and half the age of 83-year-old Dave. “I’ve enjoyed my career. When I started out, I wanted a career in music. I knew that from the beginning. I even enjoyed the weeks of cabaret - we’d be in Batley, then Dundee the next week, or Swansea, the whole country. I used them to my advantage. I could perform different songs in those shows, like Johnny Cash’s Dark As a Dungeon. I’m still doing something a little different. It’s not going to be Hi Ho Silver Lining.”

* Dave Berry and The Cruisers play the Caroline Club, Saltaire, on Friday September 23. Tickets are £15.

For tickets go to eventbrite.co.uk/e/dave-berry-live-at-the-caroline-club-saltaire-tickets-371939951407