ON Sunday night, the ever theatrical Andy Bell will be continuing his conversion from Popstar To Operastar under the ITV1 spotlight.

Tomorrow, however, finds him in more familiar pop-star mode deep in the North Yorkshire woodland, pouring gold dust on Erasure’s synth-pop back catalogue at a sold-out Dalby Forest as part of their Total Pop! Forest Tour.

Naturally, the journey into the opera unknown filled him with more trepidation than Bell and Vince Clarke’s return to Erasure duties after a four-year hiatus from recording and playing live.

“To be honest, I was a bit scared in the beginning because I thought it was going to be a bit like tabloidy television, but it’s not been like that at all,” says Andy.

“They have been very respectful and just very professional, and it’s really all about the singing. And obviously they want you to look good because they want themselves to look good. I have really enjoyed it so far.”

Erasure, meanwhile are marking their 25th anniversary by playing woodland shows in Suffolk, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Gloucestershire, Staffordshire and Cheshire, as well as God’s Own Country.

“It should be a good vibe,” says Andy. “It’s going to be all the singles we have ever had really. There will be lots of the more unusual ones that people haven’t heard, and a few album tracks as well, and then maybe one new one.”

That new one will be a foretaste of Erasure’s upcoming autumn album, Tomorrow’s World, recorded with fast-rising British electropop talent Frankmusic, whose production skills have already been in demand from Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys and Ellie Goulding.

“It’s very interesting. Working with Frankmusik is a whole different thing,” says Andy. “He’s got a little studio in LA. He went out to see Vince and worked with him in Maine in the wintertime; he’s never been anywhere so cold in his life before, so he equates it to Misery, the film.

“Some headline on some website said ‘Frank: it’s a Misery working with Erasure’ kind of thing! But he’s really cool.”

The album was written in New York, London and Clarke’s log cabin in Maine, as Erasure reunited after Andy’s second solo album, Non Stop, and Vince’s Yazoo reunion tour with old Essex sparring partner Alf, alias Alison Moyet.

Recording took place in Maine, London and Los Angeles between January and this month, the finishing touches being applied by Vince’s array of vintage analogue synthesisers for a 2011 sound that is at once retro yet modern.

Come the autumn, Erasure’s vision of Tomorrow’s World will be revealed. In the meantime, the Total Pop! tour enables Clarke and Bell to reflect on a partnership now stretching to a quarter of a century. Echoes of the pioneering glam synth-pop that brought Erasure five successive number one albums can be heard in the works of Lady Gaga and La Roux, but the likes of A Little Respect, Sometimes, Victim Of Love and Breathe stand the test of time too.

Erasure breathe again, you could say.

“I get quite surprised by the quality of our early work,” says Andy, but maybe he shouldn’t be surprised “because me and Vince put so much into it”.