TONY Christie needed to be shown the way to Amarillo in his most famous hit, and now he may require directions to Pocklington Arts Centre on Tuesday.

“To be honest, I’d never heard of Pocklington,” says the Sheffield crooner, who nevertheless will front his nine-piece band in Pock that night. Tony is fast approaching his 50th anniversary in music, a landmark that has prompted him to return to his musical roots on his 19th studio album, Now’s The Time!, a collection of new songs with echoes of Northern Soul, Stax, British beat and film soundtracks.

“Listening to the radio recently, I was thinking that quite a few of the new songs I heard could have been made in the Sixties or Seventies, which is good for me,” says Tony.

Rediscovering the soul side of Tony Christie that marked his early career, he has recorded a series of tracks with producer Richard Barrett, from The All Seeing Eye, that are at once retro yet of the moment too.

The title track is a statement of intent. “It’s a nod to the Sixties and Seventies, but also ‘Now’s the time’ that I think better things are going to happen,” he says.

“This is a very fickle business. Most pop artists have the lifespan of a mayfly, but I look at it that I was a cabaret singer who got lucky by having a hit as I wasn’t looking to have one. My dream was to sing big-band songs, like Sinatra, but the fact that I could do the other side was a boon for me as there’s no money in jazz.”

Put him on the spot as to what he most enjoys singing, and Tony says: “Do you know, if I’m singing to myself in the shower or going around in the car, it’s always Sinatra or Peggy Lee; it’s singers from the Forties and Fifties.”

Yet such is Tony’s vocal dexterity that last year he turned his hand to performing in a musical.

“I was looking for things to things to do in 2010 and one of the things my son said was that I should do a biography, but I wasn’t keen on that, but we looked at ticking boxes and one of the things I hadn’t done was a West End musical,” he says.

“My agent contacted Bill Kenwright [the impresario] and asked if he had anything in mind that Tony Christie could do, and he said, ‘What about Dreamboats And Petticoats at the Playhouse?’, so I did four months in that as the father of the young Bobby, which I really enjoyed.

“One of the good things that came out of that was singing the Smokey Robinson song Shop Around, which I now do in my own show in my own way.”

Shop Around does not feature on the new album, which has compositions by songwriter Mike Ward, producer Barrett and singer Tony, and a collaboration with fellow Sheffield luminary Jarvis Cocker on a re-working of the Get Carter theme as Get Christie. And what do you get if you get Christie these days?

“A stayer! A curio. A throwback to the old days... and still a sharp look,” he says.

“And it’s amazing that to youngsters I’m now cool. I could never have imagined that because I had to go through that awful period of journalists saying I was just a cheesy pop singer because of the cabaret I did.

“But it’s always been about how you work your audience. You can’t dress down, just walk on and not talk to anyone as if you’ve just come to clean the boilers. Stars are supposed to be glamorous.”

Now Tony Christie has made an album that has given him the opportunity to be “the real me”.

“It’s difficult to define ‘the real me’ without sounding full of myself, but I’m a Jack of all trades,” he says. “I can do big band music, film music, I can sing songs from My Fair Lady, five years ago I did an album of jazz standards with Martin Taylor; I’m a singer and I’m able to bend my style to whatever I’m singing… although I can’t sing opera, that’s not my thing.”

Now’s The Time! closes with the even more positive-sounding Something Better.

“Well, I firmly believe that bigger things are going to happen because very slowly I’m getting more kudos,” says Tony. “A lot of respect comes down to respecting your elders, but the fact is I’m working better than I did 40 years ago. My voice is better, it has a better range, and I’m in a very happy place at the moment.”

• Tony Christie plays Pocklington Arts Centre on Tuesday at 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk