racie Fields, Liberal heavyweight MP Sir Cyril Smith, the Co-op and Andy Kershaw have one thing in common: Rochdale.

Like the popular wartime singer and the grocery chain, DJ, journalist and latterly foreign correspondent Andy Kershaw has touched a lot of people’s lives.

Next month he comes to Bradford to talk about his adventures in music and experiences in North Korea, Rwanda, Haiti and Zaire – just some of the 97 countries he has visited and either written or made programmes about.

Forthright and engaging, he could easily do a stand-up routine, be funny and serious, and hold the attention of an audience. So why doesn’t he?

“I am not conceited enough to walk out on stage and say, ‘Listen to me, I am going to give you a lecture about myself for the next 90 minutes,” he said.

Instead, he’ll be in conversation with a journalist, a format he first tried with Ruth Pitt at Ilkley Literature Festival and liked. In Bradford he’ll probably be talking about his much-praised autobiography No Off Switch (Serpent’s Tail, £18.99), to journalist and Bringing It All back Home author Ian Clayton.

The world as it is reported and the world that Andy Kershaw has encountered on his travels are two different things.

“It does leave you with a different sense of perspective, priorities, perceptions,” he said.” If there is a common denominator in all the different styles of music I like it is ‘soul’ – another word for humanity.

“I never set out to be well known. I am still that kid from Rochdale. Everything I do is driven by nosiness, curiosity. My dad had me drilled as an amateur historian since the age of two. I have always been an instinctive journalist.”

He said his domestic troubles of five years ago, which resulted in a short spell in prison, are behind him. Since then he has made an eight-part series for Radio 3, written his autobiography and is about to embark on a 30-date tour of the UK. “I’m firing on all six,” he says.

“The only judgement that matters to me is the judgement of my two children. My little girl said to me over the New Year, ‘Daddy, I am really proud of you... I don’t give a toss about anything else.”

  • Andy Kershaw is in conversation at the Alhambra Studio on February 22, starting at 8pm. To book, ring (01274) 432000.