MADNESS lead singer and raconteur Suggs will present his second show of anecdotes, What A King Cnut, A Life In The Realm Of Madness, at the Grand Opera House, York, on March 4 next year.

In response to the demand for a follow-up to his tour-de-force debut show of chat and acoustic song, My Life Story In Words And Music, Suggs will move on from reflecting on "how on Earth he got there" to revealing "the surprises that awaited him when he did".

Such as? Suffering from vertigo on the roof of Buckingham Palace. Nearly blowing the closing ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games. Watching his underpants fall to earth on David Bowie’s driveway.

Things have gone a smidge surreal since the Madness frontman was a 12 year old in shorts on the tough streets of North London. Constantly expecting that inevitable tap on the shoulder to hear "what are you doing here, Sunshine?", how has he come this far? In a business where you can be washed up at any minute, how has managed to, in his words, get away with it for so long?

Fame is a tightrope and Suggs has fallen off many times, but for all the near-death experiences, he takes great solace in the words of the Greek philosopher, Blondie: "The tide is high, but I’m holding on".

The unlucky demise of his cat lay behind Suggs’s first show, My Life Story In Words And Music, which played the Grand Opera House in January 2012. Nursing a hangover from the celebrations for his 50th birthday in January 2011, he was lying in the bath when... crash.

"I jumped out of the water, and there, lying amid shards of broken glass, was our four-year-old cat, a British blue called Mamba," he said. "I’d put up the glass shelf myself and it must have given way. I knew he was dead from the strange angle of his body. I couldn’t believe it. I loved that cat.

"I was 50. My kids had recently left home and now the cat was dead. I was really upset. It triggered a deluge of emotion, an event that somehow tipped me over the edge. I began to consider my own mortality and, out of that, the idea for exploring my own past somehow crystallised."

The result was an access-all-areas backstage pass to Suggs’s mind, combining anecdotes and song with musical accompaniment and “pointless interjections” from his loyal pianist-cum-manservant, Deano Mumford, The Rifles’ keyboards player.

"It’s a memoir," said Suggs at the time. "It’s not stand-up. It’s not An Evening With… I toyed with calling it Mad-Life Crisis. In the end, though, having gone all round the houses, I called it My Life Story".

The sequel again will place "the good bits" side by side with "the darker moments", stretching beyond almost four decades of pop music, radio, television, film, adverts and the pie and mash industry into his personal life.

Tickets for Suggs's 7.30pm show are on sale at £29.75 on 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york