WIRRAL-BORN Paul Heaton has announced a brand new album and tour with a date at the M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool later this year. 

The Mighty Several, produced by the Lightning Seeds' Ian Broudie will be released on Friday, October 11. 

Heaton, his band and guest singer Rianne Downey will also embark on a winter 2024 UK tour where they’ll be performing songs from throughout his career including The Beautiful South, The Housemartins and his more recent chart-topping albums.

Very special guests on all dates will be The Zutons. Tickets go on general sale at 9:30am on Friday 28 June. Tickets for the tour are all priced at only £35 (+ ticket fees).

Heaton is one of the UK’s most successful songwriters, with five No 1 albums and some 15m album sales under his belt. He first came to prominence in the early 80s as front man of The Housemartins (the same group that gave us Norman ‘Fatboy Slim’ Cook). The Housemartins released two albums London 0 Hull 4 (’86) and The People Who Grinned Themselves To Death (’87). In ’88 Heaton formed The Beautiful South, who released ten hugely successful albums - Welcome To The Beautiful South (’89), Choke (’90), 0898 Beautiful South (’92), Miaow (’94), Blue Is The Colour (’96), Quench (’98), Painting It Red (2000), Gaze (’03), Golddiggas, Headnodders & Pholk Songs (’04) and Superbi (’06).

In 2001 Heaton took a break from The Beautiful South and released his first solo album Fat Chance. The Beautiful South called it a day in 2007 citing ‘musical similarities’. Paul Heaton went on to release two further solo albums: The Cross-Eyed Rambler (’08) and Acid Country (’10). In 2011 Heaton wrote a musical called The 8th based on the Seven Deadly Sins and asked former Beautiful South singer Jacqui Abbott to perform in it.

Paul and Jacqui went on to record five acclaimed albums as a duo: What Have We Become (’14), Wisdom, Laughter and Lines (’15), Crooked Calypso (’17), Manchester Calling (’20) and N.K-Pop (’22). In 2019 Paul released a career spanning compilation of his biggest hits entitled The Last King Of Pop.

Paul Heaton plays the M&S Bank Arena on Friday, December 6. Tickets available from: mandsbankarena.com