Nothing has a nostalgic pull quite like music.

Gilbert O’Sullivan songs take me back to long, hot car journeys in the 1970s, when hits like Matrimony and Clair played on my parents’ clunky tape recorder, balanced on the dashboard, during summer holidays.

“I’m glad they’re good memories. I’d hate to think they were painful ones,” smiles Gilbert.

“One couple who’ve seen me several times kept asking me to sing The Niceness Of It All. I’ve now agreed to do it – but it’s been so long I’ve had to re-learn all the chords!”

Next month he celebrates a 45-year career with the release of A Singer And His Songs – The Very Best Of Gilbert O’Sullivan, followed by a tour, coming to Bradford. The set list spans from 1971 debut album Himself to his latest album, Gilbertville.

“You can get into a treadmill in the recording studio so it’ll be great to get out there,” says Gilbert. “It’s me with an 11-piece band and a string quartet – 35 songs in two-and-a-half hours.”

Gilbert’s first two albums stayed in the UK charts for more than a year, and in 1972 he was the biggest-selling UK artist in the world.

The success of multi million-selling, Grammy-nominated Alone Again (Naturally) catapulted him to stardom in America. In the UK his 14 Top Ten hits included Clair, which reached No 1, and Get Down, for which he won two Ivor Novello Awards.

He remains a prolific songwriter. His trademark melodies have a timeless appeal.

“For me, songwriting is a joyful craft. I never lost enthusiasm for it and it’s something I feel I have to do,” says Gilbert, 66.

“The key is the melody. George Harrison reached the stage where he couldn’t stand what he heard on the radio and said he wasn’t inspired by anything new. He missed the melodies.

“I like Laura Marling, but with an artist like Rihanna, it’s not so much a song as a well-produced sound.

“Everyone writes words, but very few write music.”

His words are just as memorable as his melodies, though. He continues to deliver wise, kitchen-sink lyrics, fusing humour and melancholy. Gilbertville includes the tracks All They Wanted To Say, about September 11, and the quintessentially British Where Would We Be (Without Tea)?

“I write songs the postman can sing on his rounds,” says Gilbert, 66. “It’s nice to write romantic songs, but I like to go darker, too. I’ve written about alcoholism, depression, the humiliation of free school meals. We didn’t have much money and I still remember that dread on Monday mornings when I was handed a different coloured dinner ticket.”

Born Raymond O’Sullivan in Waterford, Ireland, he started playing music at art college in the 1960s. Following stints in semi-professional bands, he signed a record contract in 1967 and later sent demo tapes to Tom Jones’s manager Gordon Mills, who took him on.

Gilbert had cultivated a striking image involving a pudding-basin haircut, flat cap, short trousers and boots. He looked like he’d stepped out of an LS Lowry painting.

“I had a strong sense of image, but it was a dirty word back then,” says Gilbert. “People like the Beatles were growing longer hair and I wanted to look different. Nobody liked it, not even Gordon.”

He later adopted a relaxed, college boy style, with his trademark curly hair.

In 1970, Gilbert had his first Top Ten hit, Nothing Rhymed. Subsequent hits included Underneath The Blanket Go and No Matter How I Try, then Alone Again (Naturally) sold worldwide, earning him his first gold disc.

Clair, written about Gordon Mills’s young daughter, remains one of his best-loved songs, but in the 1980s the pair were embroiled in a legal fight. Gilbert won, but the court battle put his recording career on hold.

While he hasn’t had the superstardom of one-time contemporaries such as Elton John, Gilbert’s music has a lasting hold. His songs have appeared in TV shows from The Simpsons to Life On Mars and films such as Stuart Little and Virgin Suicides, and been covered by the likes of Bobby Darin, Nina Simone, The Feeling and Morrissey.

“I desperately wanted success, but it was never about the red carpet,” says Gilbert. “One of the first big events I was invited to was a Paul McCartney reception in 1970. There were hundreds of people lining the entrance. I stuck my head down, barged through and ran in. I couldn’t bear the thought of being spotted.”

Today, Gilbert lives in Jersey with his Norwegian wife, Aase. He often shares his recording studio there with other musicians. “If they’re serious about it, we let them use it for a weekend,” he says. “The studio is high-tech, but all I really need is a piano.

“Songwriting is a discpline; I sit with a notebook, in the tradition of McCartney and Ray Davies, and knuckle down. It’s worth it in the end.”

Gilbert O’Sullivan is at St George’s Hall on Saturday, April 7. For tickets, ring (01274) 432000.