SHEFFIELD troubadour Richard Hawley concludes his latest British travels at Hull City Hall tonight.

He has been touring, touring, touring. “Yeah, tell me about it!” he says in his Steel City baritone. “I’ve just got back from ten days in Australia, which was insanity on a stick. If you add up all the miles, I did 25,000. People underestimate the size of Australia. I think I turned into a wombat while I was there.

“All you have to do is get it together for two hours on stage in any 24 hours, but the rest of the time you can be in the corner sucking your thumb or crying your eyes out.”

The travelling is not over yet. “There’ll be European stuff, I guess, because we’re massive in Luxembourg,” deadpans Richard.

All this leg work has come at a time when Richard has been recuperating from breaking his leg falling down a Barcelona stairwell last June.

“The leg is all right now but on those 25,000 miles of travelling, it gave me a bit of gip,” he says. “I must admit the first thing I did when I got back was to test for deep-vein thrombosis.”

This week’s tour dates coincide with the release of Don’t Stare At The Sun, the fourth and final single from Richard’s seventh studio album, Standing At the Sky’s Edge.

“You’ve got to avoid it, mate,” says Richard, meaning the sun, not the single. “You think it should be paradise, but the strange thing is, we’ve f***** up paradise with all this global warming.

“We want to bask in this beautiful sunlight – but then I remember how I had this terrible experience where I’d fallen asleep on Bondi Beach with a four-pack in my hand, and though I was only asleep for ten minutes, I got hospitalised for three days with a huge blister on my back.”

The song was inspired by another recollection. “It was taking my youngest son flying a kite as a baby,” says Richard. “He was really into staring at the sun, which you do as a child. As a parent it was really doing my head in, though I know it’s a rites-of-passage thing to see how long you can stare at the sun – but I wouldn’t advise it.”

By now you will know that Richard lost out to Ben Howard for the British Male Solo Artist prize at the 2013 Brit Awards on February 20, much as he expected. Would he be going to the ceremony, The Press asked him in advance?

“All I’m saying is I’ll be in Bristol that night, playing at the Colston Hall, and I’ve never cancelled in my life if I can help it,” he said.

He has attended twice, the last time when nominated for his Lady’s Bridge album. “I was so desperate to leave after a nano-second,” he says. He had sparked up a fag, hoping to be asked to leave; instead everyone else lit up too.

He would have had to rule out smoking last week. “I’ve stopped smoking for more than a month now,” Richard reveals.

• Richard Hawley plays Hull City Hall tonight; box office: 01482 300300 or hullcc.gov.uk/hullcityhall