BILLY Ocean — the biggest black recording star Britain has ever produced — is eating a margherita pizza when he comes to the phone.

“I like to keep things simple, just cheese and tomato,” he says in his thick Caribbean/London drawl, explaining his choice of pizza.

“The simpler you keep life, the better off you are. I try to keep my life like a margherita pizza” — and then he chuckles.

Unlike most media-trained celebrities, Billy doesn’t have prepared answers for questions, actually considering his thoughts before answering.

“How am I enjoying touring?” he ponders. “It has ups and downs but at the end of the day touring is not like how it was before. When I was younger I used to spend a lot of wasted energy on the wrong things. Now I can see it for what it is. I know I’m going out for the moments I spend with the people.”

Billy says his new show — the first in 15 years — is made up of all the hits with a few new tracks from his new album, due out in spring, thrown into the mix.

Born in Trinidad, Billy settled in London’s East End at the age of seven. After listening to Otis Redding and Sam Cooke, as well as groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Billy decided a career in music was for him.

But his mother insisted on him learning a trade, which led him to train as a tailor in London’s Savile Row as a teenager.

“I’m still a fairly normal kind of person,” said Billy. “Sometimes I wonder what I’m doing in this world of extroverts.

“I come from parents who wanted us to do the right thing so I was always working too. I worked as a tailor on Savile Row but I got the sack because of music (his bosses weren’t impressed when his first single was played on Radio One).

“Then I went to work for Ford in Dagenham. I took the job because they’d give you two weeks on days, then two weeks’ nights. During the times when I was on nights I did sessions in the studio, but after a while it nearly killed me. When you’re young you don’t think about things like needing sleep.”

Billy got his first break when he signed to GTO records and his second single, Love Really Hurts Without You, reached number two in the UK and number 12 in the US.

Throughout the ’80s Billy continued to release hit after hit; Caribbean Queen, When The Going Gets Tough (The Tough Get Going), and Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car. To date he has sold more than 30 million records and has collected a pile of gold and platinum records across the world.

One of his happiest memories was making the video for When the Going Gets Tough, the theme from the film The Jewel of the Nile, starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

“Being told that I was number one in America was one of the most surprising and frightening things for me. I was nervous but I went over there and found out it was all OK really — nobody was going to eat me or anything. Nothing is as scary as you think it will be.”

In the early ’90s, with a young family at home, Billy decided to take a break to spend some time at home.

“A few years’ break somehow turned into 15 years,” said Billy In 2007, with the kids grown up, Billy decided to launch himself on the scene again, embarking on a world tour.

“When you’re younger you’re only worried about your ego and your own success. When you come back you see people laughing and singing along, having a good time, and you think ‘this is really what it’s about’. You only get back what you give.”

l See Billy Ocean at Blackpool Opera House on October 14 (call 0870 380 1111) and at Bolton Albert Halls on October 28 (01204 334400).