THE walls of Abergavenny’s Borough Theatre were alive with the unmistakable brogue of a boy from the Black Country last Friday when Dexys Midnight Runners frontman Kevin Rowland stormed into town.

No song was sung and no tune was played, but the audience did get a right proper talking to as the music legend discussed his new memoir “Bless Me Father.”

Arriving on stage like a cross between a Peaky Blinder and a New Romantic, the 71-year-old snappy dresser sat down with journalist Gary Raymond for a brief chat on the high highs and low lows of being a pop star.

Proving himself to be a natural raconteur, the “Come On Eileen” hitmaker talked about his experiences as the son of an Irish immigrant growing up in Wolverhampton and the complicated and often difficult relationship with his father, who helped shape him.

He also explained how in the early days of Dexys , during the “Searching For The Young Soul Rebels” period, the outfit was run like a tight ship with no quarter asked and no quarter given - the ethos being that if you were serious about making it, you had to treat it like a job and put both the hours and hard yards in.

Yet success comes at a cost and when Dexys exploded into the public consciousness with their second album, “Too Rye Ay,” it wasn’t the ultimate validation Rowland hoped it would be.

When it’s follow-up, the brilliant yet criminally ignored “Don’t Stand Me Down” flopped, it seemingly silenced the voice of a musical maverick,

Yet after years of wandering in the wilderness of debt, drug addiction, and homelessness, Rowland bounced back with a new incarnation of Dexys and arrived in Abergavenny to tell the audience all about taking the long road and walking it.

After an evening of insights, two questions still remain. When is Rowland going to launch his own clothes range, and when will Dexys play the Borough?