GILBERT O'Sullivan made his first foray into the pop world with his debut single, Disappear, all of 50 years ago.

It wasn't a hit, but nor was it prescient because the Irish singer-songwriter did not disappear, instead going on to record such Seventies' hits as Alone Again (Naturally), Nothing Rhymed, Matrimony, Clair, Get Down and Why Oh Why Oh Why.

At 70, he is undertaking a 50th anniversary tour that brings O'Sullivan to the Grand Opera House, York, on Monday night, in the wake of last summer's release of The Essential Collection, a personally selected 43-track resumé of his career that takes in his most recent singles, No Way and I Guess I’ll Always Love You.

It peaked at number 11 in the charts in a year when O'Sullivan performed a concert for BBC Radio 2 with the 60-piece BBC Concert Orchestra.

"We did it in Dublin for Friday Night Is Music Night, and we'd been asked before if we'd like to record with the RTE Orchestra," says Gilbert. "There's always been talk of doing a live album with an orchestra, whether 30, 40, 50 or 60 musicians, and the thing is that my music has often had orchestras with it. The last few years I've done tours with a string quartet but last time I had an extra guitar player, so we didn't need strings."

Gilbert looks back on 2016 with satisfaction and is projecting a similarly productive 2017. "It was a very good year with the Latin Ala G album, the Essential Collection, the BBC concert and No Way being A-listed with the BBC for airplay," he says. "Already this year I've had discussions in London about the next album, meeting up with the producer Ethan Johns at the beginning of February.

"I had one track that summed up the approach I wanted to take this year, which is to rock it up, so we sent it out to potential potential producers and Ethan heard it and arranged to meet me. A lot of the tracks I've been working on for the future are musically finished but not the lyrics."

In the light of such shows as The Kinks' musical Sunny Afternoon and the Carole King story, Beautiful, has Gilbert ever considered building a musical around his songs? "I've had people interested in using my songs, my back catalogue, but not in coming up with a new story for those songs, and I'm more interested in writing new songs," he says.

"I just like the art of songwriting: I've never lost my love of writing the three or four-minute pop song, so my aim this year will be to put together another album.

"I'm happy to have got to this point in reasonably good health, and it's more that other people wanted to mark my 50th anniversary. I'll just keep writing."

Gilbert O'Sullivan plays the Grand Opera House, York, on his 50th Anniversary Tour on Monday night at 7.30pm. Box office: 0844 871 3024 or at atgtickets.com/york