Can this really be him — one of the Eighties’ most reclusive pop stars, out of sight and out of mind for 20 years, on the phone from Switzerland? Is he a tax exile, trying to hide from the recent internet phenomenon known as Rick-rolling that has brought him huge and perhaps unwanted fame from a whole new generation? Of course not.

Rick Astley in fact lives comfortably in London with his wife and daughter. But he’s playing a gig in Bratislava, Slovakia, and wanted to break up the journey because he’s “a bit funny about flying”, so he drove. He managed to pluck up the courage to go heli-skiing in Verbier, though, “and the skiing seemed like a doddle after the helicopter. It’s beautiful here and I know they say the Swiss are boring but I’ll take boring. It’s not like London — everything works!”

Astley, 42, has granted The Times a rare interview because he’s about to headline the Here and Now tour, an Eighties reunion trek across the UK that also includes Kim Wilde, Howard Jones and Brother Beyond. Having headlined the same tour last year he wasn’t planning to do it again, but then Boy George got banged up after his unfortunate incident with a male escort and Astley had to step in. “Poor George,” he says. “I don’t know him but it seems such a waste, somebody as sharp and intelligent as that being sent to prison.”

He is a self-deprecating man; humble, warm and glad to still be making money and to have had a comfortable life. The odd white van man still asks for his autograph “and that’s fine, that’s part of the job description — it’s nice to be remembered”.

Of all the stars of the Eighties hit factory of Stock, Aitken and Waterman (Kylie, Jason, Sonya, et al) Astley was seen as the most unlikely; the tea boy who got lucky, even though he had in fact signed his deal long before he hung around that studio making cuppas. Even when he made the cover of Smash Hits, the magazine never let him forget his confession that he wrote his first song at the age of 7 and called it Ruddy Big Pig.

Predating Simon Cowell with his hitched-up belt, plus that gingery quiff, the shades, the awkward arm dance, as if he wasn’t quite convinced which way he should be swinging them, Astley could have been a bit of a joke. But his squeaky-clean success was no laughing matter. His soulful baritone, which led some to believe that he was black, gave him eight consecutive Top Ten hits including five weeks at No 1 with Never Gonna Give You Up, the biggest-selling single of 1987. He’s happy to call his songs “naff” now, but theirs was a very polished naffness, sung by a wise old romantic crooner in the body of a natty 21-year-old.

But after a couple of albums he gave up, having married Lene Bausager, then a promoter at his record label, and had a daughter, Emilie, now 16. He brought out more albums — Keep it Turned On in 2002 and Portrait in 2005 — to a quiet reception. His daughter has been teased a bit about her dad but nothing too negative, he hopes, even when Rick-rolling introduced him to a new demographic of fans. He’s been around to watch her grow up, which matters to him enormously. He’s also got an exciting new project on the go — Rick Astley is writing a musical!

“My wife’s now a movie producer so I read a lot of scripts and I’m really passionate about films,” he says. “One day I thought, ‘Well, why don’t I write one?’ And it turned into a musical — but not for the stage. It’s dominated by the songs I’ve written — they tell the stories — so I hooked up with a guy in California and we wrote the script together. We’re at the point of speaking to a few different agents and getting people to read. I’m not fooling myself — nothing may come of it and I totally understand that, but as a process I have loved it. When you’re writing frothy pop songs the lyrics can be a bit ‘whatever’, they are hooky and you just sing them because they work. But writing these songs . . .” He falters. “Do they call that a libretto?”

The synth sounds of the Gary Numan world will figure highly, because it’s set, “would you believe, in the 1980s! The working title is New York Cowboy because it’s about a young guy who sets off from a small town — not Newton-le-Willows [Astley’s home town], ha-ha — to go to New York.”

His own last trip to New York was to do a surprise performance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade last month, all thanks to the new lease of life given him by Rick-rolling. It’s hard to imagine if you’re not the online type, but it became a massive phenomenon. Astley finds it funny. “Have you seen the one with Barack Obama? That was just amazing! They cut up videos of his speeches so he says each word of Never Gonna Give You Up. That’s just bonkers.”

It hasn’t gone to his head, though, “because it’s not about me, is it? It probably started with some kid in Smallsville Arizona who wanted a naff Eighties video to trick his friend with, and he chose mine.”

As for the parade, “it’s huge — 50 million viewers. People watch the parade, then they sit down to Thanksgiving dinner. I called a couple of American friends and they said: ‘You’ve got to do it!’ So I took the family again and we had a holiday.

“And I’ve seen clips of 100 people outside a Scientology church with masks on singing Never Gonna Give You Up. I don’t care about Scientology, but that’s just funny. Yeah I won’t be invited to Tom Cruise’s birthday. But then I never was anyway, so there you go.”

In the wake of his revived fame, he won an audience vote at the MTV Awards for Best Act of all Time but refused to attend. “I only won it because of people voting and then quite possibly voting again. And I just thought it was ridiculous — 99 per cent of the MTV audience wouldn’t have known who I was. And when I watched it, Bono was there giving an award to Paul McCartney and I just thought: ‘I am so glad I am not there, I would have felt a right idiot getting an award in front of those two.’ Can you imagine?”

He says fame was always strange for him, though of course his never approached that of, say, Madonna. “She’s not even a pop star any more — she’s so famous she’s something else. It’s like the word Hoover. Ha-ha, listen to me — that’s amazing, I’ve managed to compare the world’s most iconic pop star to a vacuum cleaner.”

So, on to the big question — what has he been doing all this time? “I’ve done a few different things. A bit of film music; I had a studio for quite a while in Fulham.” What, where other artists would come and record music? “Not artists — more somewhere friends would come and . . . I find this really difficult, to be honest, because I don’t do many interviews and it’s very difficult to explain. I haven’t really done anything for 15 years! Obviously I have, and people who know me say that I’m the busiest person they know that doesn’t have a job. And it’s not because I sit in my dressing gown . . . well I do sit in my dressing gown watching Spartacus some days.”

He keeps up with modern pop music — he thinks Girls Aloud “have got some great tunes” and that Rihanna is fabulous. “I saw her on telly the other day — when I was in my dressing gown, obviously — and I thought: ‘There’s someone who looks like a real pop star.’ I don’t think I really looked that much like a pop star but at least I had the shoulder pads and the quiff.”

As for his future, he’s got a new band called the Luddites. “I play drums and sing with my two friends Graham and Simon and we play East Molesey Cricket Club every now and again — there’ll be some dates this summer so watch this space. We give the money to charity and we do all the rock covers we’ve ever wanted to play. Just three of us as loud as we can be. We were going to call ourselves Mid-Life Crisis because that’s what it is. But it’s some of the best fun I’ve ever had doing music. It’s amazing. It’s animalistic.” Looks like the shy cowboy is back.

The Here and Now tour continues at Liverpool Echo Arena on May 14 (0844 8471726, www.here-and-now.info)

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