WHEN Matt Monro Junior comes to the Albert Halls in Bolton next week his show, in which he tells his father’s life story, will be more emotional than ever.

For it will be one of the last times that Matt ever takes to the stage to sing the songs which his father made so famous.

“This is a farewell tour,” he said. “It is goodbye, I’m not going to be one of those artists who say they are stopping and then comes back after three years. This is definitely my lot.”

Matt has travelled the world over the last four years with the current show. His dad was one of the UK’s most popular singers in the Sixties, having a string of hits including Portrait of My Love and Walk Away. He died, aged just 54 in 1985.

“The show is my dad’s life story from the time he was born to the time he died,” said Matt Jr. A narrator guides the audience through Matt Monro’s life aided by film clips and archive footage with Matt Jr singing his father’s songs.

The show ends on an emotional high with Matt Jr singing a duet with his father.

“The overwhelming feedback we have had from audiences is that it’s so emotional,” said Matt Jr. “By the end of it you will know more about the man I am proud to say was my father.”

Matt Monro Junior has built up a reputation as a singer in his own right and has spent the past 30 years performing and touring. And yet, he never had any desire to be a singer.

“I wanted to be a professional golfer,” he said. “When I left school, I worked for NatWest for three years as my dad wanted me to get a proper job but then I became a golf professional in America. I was based in Florida and pretty much set up for life when dad died.

“I came home then but I had no intention of becoming a singer. I just went round doing some after dinner speaking to do with cancer which is what dad died of and it all started with some idiot saying ‘can you sing us a song?’ That was over 30 years ago.”

Matt only ever sang with his father once on stage when he was 13.

“That’s why the duet I do with him in the show is so poignant to me. It brings me back to that night in 1977 when dad dragged me up on stage,” he said. “The weird thing was that I had never sung with dad at home, we’d never even discussed it but he just dragged me up to perform Yesterday which he had a hit with before the Beatles.

“My voice was breaking so it wasn’t the greatest rendition.

“He’d obviously heard me singing in my bedroom but to be honest, in dad’s day he used to have an afternoon nap before doing a show at night and he’d say ‘son I’m trying to sleep here, stop the racket’.”

Matt admits that knowing this tour will be his last has been particularly emotional.

“Every theatre we play where my dad went to, I make sure I go into the same dressing room he used,” he said. “When I walk the stage for the sound check I look down and know he stood in that same spot. That’s more emotional for me than the show, apart from the duet at the end.

“But the time is right to call it a day. I am now the same age as my dad was when he died and that has had a big effect on me.

“I also I go married 10 months ago. It’s now time for me to make new memories in my life.

“I have never really said goodbye to my dad.

“The reason I went on stage 31 years ago was so that effectively I could go on stage every night and talk about him as though he was still around. But now it is time to let go.”

The Matt Monro Story, Albert Halls, Bolton, Thursday, November 8. Details from 01204 332157 or www.alberthalls-bolton.co.uk