Old rockers in your 40s, steady yourself for some troubling news. It's 20 years since The Quireboys released their tune-filled, Faces-friendly debut album A Bit Of What You Fancy.

Yup, we know how that feels. If it makes you feel any better, Spike – the cheery, semi-professional alcoholic Quireboys singer – feels exactly the same.

"I don't know where it's gone, mate," he says, wheezing his way through a delightful 30-minute interview with The Week in advance of his forthcoming acoustic show at The Musician.

For a brief moment in time, The Quireboys looked set to have it all. Platinum debut. World tours. Big gigs at Donington. Supporting the Rolling Stones at St James' Park. "We had the home dressing room for that gig," says Geordie Spike. "I had the number nine peg! It didn't get any better than that."

And then along came grunge.

By the time their second album was released in 1993 – the not-quite-as-tune-filled Bitter, Sweet and Twisted – the musical landscape had changed.

Suddenly, The Quireboys and their booze-drenched rock'n'roll seemed somehow out of time, out of place.

"We were so tired and fed up we just couldn't do it any more," he says.

"So we didn't. We drifted away and did our own thing, with a vague idea that one day we'd come back together and pick up where we left off."

Spike – real name Jonathan Gray – spent five years in Hollywood, hanging out on Sunset Strip, singing with anyone who would buy him a pint and trying to convince himself that this was the life when he knew, really, that it wasn't. "It drove me mad in the end," he says.

So he came home. The Quireboys – albeit without fellow songwriter Guy Bailey, who retired to the paradise of, um, Peckham – reconvened.

Today, Spike doesn't do all this because he has to. He does it because he wants to.

"There's not a better job than travelling the world playing your songs in front of people. Besides, I think I'd be an alcoholic wreck if I didn't tour."

Booze has always played a big part in the story of the Quireboys. Today, says Spike, the gigs are smaller but the debauchery is about the same.

"I think we have the biggest riders in rock," he says. "We haven't cut back there."

A typical gig is routinely lubricated by three cases of strong beer, five bottles of wine and two bottles of vodka. "We used to have a bottle of Jack Daniel's, too, but we stopped that because it was making us rowdy," he says.

And Leicester?

"I know we always used to do Leicester. But to tell you the truth, they all kind of blur into one.

"I remember one night, I think it must have been after a show at the De Montfort Hall. We had a big party at the Holiday Inn and everyone turned up.

"Anyway, it got a bit raucous. The next day, when we were checking out with hangovers, the tour manager had to pay for all the damage – and all the extra booze we'd charged to his room. He wasn't very happy.

"He was arguing with the hotel staff about it and we noticed Jeremy Beadle was there, about to check in.

"This was about the time of Beadle's About, so we asked him if he could go up to the tour manager and tap him on the shoulder, pretend he'd got him.

"So he did. Our tour manager got the fright of his life. He was convinced we'd set him up for Beadle's About and we all laughed; even he laughed. Then we all sneaked out – and he still had to pay."

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The Quireboys play an alcohol-fuelled acoustic show at The Musician on Thursday, March 25. A new album, Halfpenny Dancer, is out on March 29.