SQUEEZE will conclude this autumn's 21-date From The Cradle To The Grave Tour at Harrogate International Centre on October 24.

Chris Difford, Glenn Tilbrook and co will be touring as a band for the first time in three years, joined on the road by special guest Dr John Cooper Clarke, the venerable Salford punk performance poet.

A release date is yet to be confirmed, but later this year Squeeze will release their first new material since 1998 on an album also entitled From The Cradle To The Grave, and the Deptford band's songs are to have a prominent role in a new television comedy, Cradle To Grave, too.

Some of the songs, most notably the title track, were taking shape as Squeeze performed their Pop-Up Shop tour in 2012 and now they form the basis of the follow-up to 1998's Domino album.

Squeeze aficionados will point to 2010's Spot The Difference being the band's last studio set, but that was a re-working of many of their best-known numbers, designed to give them renewed creative control over their catalogue.

First brought together by an advert in a sweetshop window, Difford and Tilbrook forged their songwriting partnership in 1974 and Squeeze made their recording debut in 1977, rising on the crest of the New Wave for a run of hits such as Cool For Cats, Up The Junction, Labelled With Love, Pulling Mussels and Tempted.

They split in 1998 in an alternative case of the Domino effect.

"Chris and I were not getting on so well; we needed a break and to follow our own paths for a bit," recalls Glenn.

"We slowly but surely came back together as people, and then reformed Squeeze in 2007. Originally, this was only planned as a short reunion, but things went so well, here we are eight years later. Four years ago we agreed that if we were to carry on, we really needed to work on new material.”

Chris reflects on those new songs: "We’ve grown up a lot in the past few years, musically. For the first five years back together, we were saying ‘this is where we came from’. Now, this is where we are. We still love and own our past, but as musicians we needed to grow.”

Many of the new compositions will feature in Cradle To Grave, providing the musical backdrop for the eight episodes based on the life of their old friend Danny Baker, the South East London comedy writer, music journalist, broadcaster and screenwriter. The series, set in the 1970s, is an adaptation of Baker's s autobiography Going To Sea In A Sieve, co-written for TV by scriptwriter and producer/director Jeff Pope.

Cradle To Grave will star comedian Peter Kay as Danny’s father Fred and Lucy Speed as the presenter’s mother Bet. The NME writer turned TV presenter and radio DJ was brought up in Deptford, the band's old stomping ground, and Squeeze were asked to become involved at an early stage.

“When I read the book, I got in contact with Danny and said that I thought we could do something together with his book," says Glenn.

"Danny was already talking with Jeff Pope about a TV series and the mood and sentiment of Cradle were completely in sync. Danny and Jeff both loved it and everything else followed on from there.”

When the team behind the TV show heard From The Cradle To The Grave, they were so impressed that it inspired the name of the series. Admiration was mutual, as Chris recalls: "The scripts were inspiring; hugely funny. It tapped into a period that lyrically I was very familiar with as I grew up in the same neighbourhood as Danny.

"We've been on location to see how it's going. It gave us a spring in our step to see the quality of filming and the direction and the attention to detail. It was very heartening and we're grateful to be involved in something that's so refreshing and also represents our past. We went to the same school, wore the same uniform, fell in love with same art teacher."

Chris enjoyed Baker's assorted radio shows for the BBC but "didn't have much to do with him when he was at NME. "It’s really only the past five or ten years. He came to my 50th birthday party and we remembered where we had both come from,” he says.

Difford and Tilbrook toured as a duo last November, playing the Grand Opera House in York on The At Odds Couple itinerary as they strengthened their once fragile bond anew.

This autumn's dates will mark their first tour, since 2012's Pop-up Shop shows, in the guise of Squeeze with the rest of the group alongside them. Missing from the line-up will be John Bentley, who is to leave the ranks this summer after his second Squeeze stint of eight years, bidding farewell at the Wickerman Festival on July 24.

Tickets for Squeeze's 7.30pm gig in Harrogate this autumn are on sale at 01423 502116 or at harrogatetheatre.co.uk