Dancing - but no tears in his eyes: Midge Ure is ready to charm Cornbury Festival

It was the most nerve-wracking thing I have ever done, worse than taking my driving test. It was like being at school and not doing well at your exams. You were always being judged. You were always looking over your shoulder. It was so much pressure. I loved it and hated it in equal measure.”

What is Midge Ure discussing? Performing with Live Aid in front of millions of people, touring with Ultravox, playing on front of thousands at stadiums around the globe or perhaps selling 3.7 million copies of the single Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Nope, reaching the finals of Celebrity Masterchef is what brought this musical legend to his knees. “Well my agent kept trying to persuade me to go into the jungle and I refused because I’m a musician. And then he remembered I could cook and half an hour later I was on the Masterchef list,” Midge says shaking his head.

“I was on tour at the time so I’d come off stage and wasn’t thinking about what to play so much as what to cook and trying to think up interesting recipes. It takes over your life. I would be trying out all these new dishes on my family to see their reactions. I think they enjoyed it more than I did.

“But I do love food. I learned on tour. We went to Japan with Thin Lizzie and I picked up a taste for Japanese cooking over there. I like cooking different things and experimenting. Plus I make a mean spag bol,” he laughs.

What about his Scottish upbringing? “In those days, anything but British food was foreign muck. Even spaghetti and curry were weird, but my dad had travelled quite a lot so he was quite open-minded. He introduced me to pasta for the first time. It wasn’t all meat and two veg.”

This love of music and food should put Midge in good stead for his appearance at Cornbury. A veteran performer he appears at festivals all over the world, often losing track of where he is. “Back stage tents tend to look the same. They all blur into one. I tend to perform and then go home.

“But I love them because we couldn’t play festivals when I was in Ultravox because of the technology involved. It took five hours to do a sound check and we had all this gear we had to travel around with.

“Festivals need you to walk on, plug in and make some noise, so we missed out. But I go to them all the time now. They are like fairgrounds with music. They are fun and entertaining. You can dance and listen to music and chill.

What about festivals like Rewind that specialise in 80s music. “Not the kind of 80s music I remember,” he says indignantly. It’s like vintage heritage with loads of people wearing green tutus. It was nothing like that. I was there.

“The 80s has become an urban myth. I was there on Top Of The Pops and there were no smurfs.”

But he does remember the real deal and was shocked and saddened by George Michael’s death recently. “Well he was much younger than I am. It was awful news and a big shock. Weirdly three months before Christmas someone suggested getting the Band Aid crew back together for its 30th anniversary. We can’t do that now because a lot of the major players have gone. But I love bumping into old pals and having a catch up.”

Does he mind playing the famous hits over and over though? “It depends where you are. If you’re at a festival you need to be hit lead and hit heavy. People don’t want you to play your new album. So you need to bring out the old songs like Dancing With Tears In My Eyes and Vienna. There’s no point playing new songs to an anonymous audience of thousands. They don’t want to hear it and you don’t want to alienate them. But at Cornbury I am playing acoustically which will be a challenge for me.”

Despite Ultravox splitting up so acrimoniously and Midge going solo for 25 years, the band then got back together five years ago. “It was a total surprise. I didn’t think we had anything left to do and then suddenly the time was right for us all, even if it was complex.We all still enjoy doing it and wanted to do the same sort of thing. We got over the elephant in the room. There were some problems to overcome. The drummer hadn’t drummed for 20 years, he’s been singing and playing the guitar instead,, but we rehearsed for six weeks and then did a three week tour and that was that. But in lots of ways nothing changes. the same old gripes are still there to come back and annoy you.”

Was he surprised by the reaction though? “People were flying from all over the world to come and see us. They didn’t believe we were back together until we actually walked out on stage together. Until then everyone thought it was some kind of conspiracy theory. So we were all taken back by the reaction.

“It was still a busman’s holiday though because I wasn’t going to give up my solo career when Ultravox got back together. I’ve had a lot of irons in the fire - directing, producing, films, motivational speaking, but my solo career has been my life blood.

“And I don’t have a big ego. Yes Live Aid had an audience of millions. But It really doesn’t bother me if I’m playing a big stadium or picking my guitar up in front of 300 people. I’m a working musician.

“It’s the same as any mixed line-up, like Cornbury. You are performing amid a sea of other artists so if you can get people to stop and listen to you, then you’re doing your job properly and if they pop out and buy your record or come along next time you’re on tour, then good, that’s a bonus.

“But it does make me laugh when people come up and say: ‘I didn’t know you could sing or play the guitar like that.’ What do they think I’ve been doing all this time?"

Midge Ure appears at Cornbury on July 9, Cornbury runs from July 7-9. cornburyfestival.com/line-up/