Suggs reveals how the stars of pop group Madness were on the road to criminal disaster

Suggs, the front-man of pop group Madness,has revealed how he and his bandmates were on a dangerous criminal path before being saved by music.

The 60-year-old singer – real name Graham McPherson ­- headed up the group as they found fame in the early 1980s, releasing songs such as House Of Fun and Baggy Trousers.

Suggs – who used the moniker for a graffiti tag before keeping it on as his stage name – was arrested for fighting in public, while his bandmates dabbled in burglary and shoplifting and even ended up in prison.

‘Being in the band was like an extension of being in a gang — apart from the fact it wasn’t just us smashing up phone boxes and kicking traffic cones down the road together,’ the crooner says in new documentary Before We Was We, set for release next month. ‘It was at a crossroads. A lot of those people we knew at that time did get into serious crime.

‘We were all a little bit involved in that sort of thing and graffiti was the first thing. Music was a huge step in the right direction.’

The band also featured saxophonist Lee ‘Thommo’ Thompson, now 63, who was caught committing burglary aged 11. 

He broke into singer Lynsey de Paul’s home with a friend where they eat cereal before they ‘put the plates in the sink and left – we didn’t take nothing’.

Along with songwriter and keyboardist Mike ‘Barso’ Barson, 62, and guitarist Chris ‘Chrissy Boy’ Foreman, 64, Thommo would also steal records from a shop in Camden on a regular basis, as well as Lambretta scooters and Sellotape.

While Thommo’s father ‘gave up on him’ and sent him to reform school, Barso went to prison when he was 18.

‘That was pretty stupid. Me and my mate found a load of these long neon light bulbs and we were just smashing them. The police got called and we got caught,’ he recalls. ‘Because we’d been stopped by the police a lot of times, the judge decided he was going to make an example of us.

‘He said, ‘Remand without bail’. That was a short, sharp shock. We were in there for about three weeks and it was pretty horrible.’

The trio, along with trumpet player Carl ‘Chas Smash’ Smyth, 62, then started to meet up to play music. 

Suggs and other band members joined later.

Over the years there have been 15 members of Madness, with a remaining six still in the group.