Several people around me (drawn from family and neighbours) go to karaoke, and sing. They get up on a wee platform, I imagine, eyeball a monitor with the rolling lyrics and sing to a backing-track of hit songs. I only saw this pseudo-art once, on a cross-channel ferry, overnight to Scandinavia, heading with my band and crew off on tour, about 10 years ago. A Norwegian trucker sang one of mine. Badly. He pulled and pushed his handmike away from and into his face and fat belly like the archetypal pub singer of legend. My roadies and band found it hilarious, and whooped in mock appreciation, demonstrating a chilling blend of schadenfreude and xenophobia. And superiority, I guess, since they were all professionals, and the trucker was not. Within a minute of catching his exaggerated ‘Yooooove dun idawl…’ I was off to my cabin and laptop, as I recall, to write about it. The others stayed on, but none performed. I asked over breakfast.

I couldn’t understand then, and cannot now, what makes them do it, the karaoke nuts. Some of those I know treat these sessions as their big night out. Do they crave the spotlight? Many professional singers are quite shy off-stage. I’m not especially shy, but I play many concerts and I can confirm that in that light the real world is put aside, the hectic pressure of life is suspended, almost extinguished. We perform in a cocoon. Eyes closed for much of the show, concentration focused on that lyric which must be delivered accurately, nailed with a dead eye, and on the inflection, which can change and surprise night by night, show by show.

These days, crib sheets lie, hopefully concealed from audienceview, gaffer-taped to monitors and the floor. Some singers go high-tech, employing autocue, but that expense demands big ticket sales; you’ll be playing arenas or bigger to merit that gizmo in the tour budget. The memory does not improve with age, of course.

Learning new song words does not get easier. A prompt here and there, now and again, seems excusable. I play a two-hours-20-minute set most nights, getting through something like 25 titles. Words, words, words.

But, while the memory cells need the occasional leg-up these days, it wasn’t always that way. The young man, the 22-year-old, could get through a 90-minute set on autopilot, arrogant and brash, confident in all his trials and efforts. Humility takes a little time to develop in some of us.

But eventually, after enough knocks, you hit level ground. As a way of life, that of the professional musician is one of privilege. Ask any karaoke regular. We seem to have everything they can only dream about: the travel, the audience, the money and the spotlight. They are right to be envious. I see dozens of fine cities each and every year, and in each and every one I’ll take in a gallery, a museum, maybe even a sightseeing tour like a proper tourist.

I’ll sit at café tables on boulevards and avenues, watching the local world go by. Strangers approach occasionally, mostly to say nothing more than hello and hey, what are you doing here? I quote a Telegoons line of Eccles, ‘Everybody’s gotta be somewhere’. Sometimes they approach with a ticket for that night’s show, and I’ll sign it.

They usually offer the whole piece, point at the main body and hand over their pen (but I never take it; I always have a pen with me – the risk of infection, colds and stuff, we avoid with great determination). Sometimes I’ll sign the stub, just to be clever. Mostly, they don’t notice. Later in the day that idiot move will come back to me and I’ll feel guilty.

Would the Norwegian trucker have the stamina for our life? Long hours are spent shuffling around airports. Flights are taken at ridiculous times. Last year we played a bullring in Estepona, southern Spain, and next day a festival in Holland. It meant an itinerary that could frighten the most frequent flyer: Meet Stansted airport at 06:30 for an 08:30 flight to Malaga (two-and-a-half hours); transfer to hotel in Marbella (35 miles), lunch, rest. Transfer 16:00 to bullring in Estepona (15 miles), sound-check, dinner in marquee backstage (rigged beside the cavern where the bulls are dragged after slaughter), to dressing-room for four hours while three local acts perform; onstage 22:30 for one-and-a-half hours; transfer once dried off and changed to Malaga airport (50 miles), arrive 01:30. Check-in, sit around until board 03:35 flight to Brussels (two-and-a-half hours – the flight was packed; we had no choice, but why were 220 others on board at that time of day? or night?). Arrive Brussels 06:15; transfer in Dutch tour-bus with living-rooms and kitchen, plus 12 bunks, to festival site in Holland. Sleep all morning, kill time all afternoon until on-stage at 19:30; back on board bus, depart site 22:00, drive to Calais, through Channel Tunnel to Stansted where it is some weird hour. Gritty-eyed. Picked-up, driven home (45 minutes for me, most were not so lucky).

It is understandable that the karaoke nuts envy us, the professionals. But it ain’t all glory and romance, as that itinerary testifies. One thing we have in common, of course, the one thrill that unites us, is our love of that spotlight. And the crib sheets, too. Actually, I’ve just realised: they get the autocue that only pros at arena level can afford. Now I’m envious of them.

STEVE HARLEY is a singer-songwriter. He founded Cockney Rebel, who topped the charts in 1975 with Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me).

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