SYDNEY Devine celebrates his 40th anniversary at the Pavilion Theatre this week with a series of sell-out shows.

Since 1974, the Cleland-born singer has been leaping onto the stage with a passion that simply defines his love affair with his audiences.

However, at his sumptuous bungalow home in Ayr, where the huge black Mercedes with the personal SD registration plate in the drive pays testimony to the entertainer's success story, Sydney reveals that performing still makes him nervous.

"You need daring to go out there on stage," he admits.

"I feel it every night I perform, and I need a strong heart to walk out there. For the longest time, I'll stand at the side of the stage and feel panic. And then I'll go on."

He adds, with a wry smile: "But if that fear, that apprehension, wasn't there I would chuck it. You need it you see. You need that sense of excitement. And it reminds you what this game is all about.

"And it's all about making sure the audience go home happy. To make that happen you have to give them your very best."

Sydney Devine MBE has been giving his very best since he took to the stage as a 13-year-old-whistler. He moved to singing rock'n'roll, and by the mid-Seventies was selling out the Pavilion for two weeks in a row.

He could earn £30k a week, and went on to sell 30 million records.

But he doesn't forget how hard showbiz has been, how difficult it can be to win over an audience.

"I've had hard nights in clubs," he recalls, smiling.

"Once, in Sheffield, I went on stage and gave it my all. But at the end of the set all I heard was silence.

" Instead, the punters all put their arms up in the air. The compere said to me (Yorkshire accent) 'I think they like you, lad'. I said 'How can you tell?'

"He said; 'They've got their arms up. If they didn't like you they'd keep their arms down.' It was like being a gladiator in a Roman Coliseum."

Sydney's success has continued since, going on to work with the likes of Dolly Parton.

Does he ever think about why he's done so well?

"Yes, and I think it's because I never short change the people who come to see me.

"I once worked with Charley Pride (the country and western singer) and he ignored me, then ignored the audience and left without signing an autograph.

"But I knew that was all wrong. I'll sign until my hand's sore. And I believe in treating people well when you're on your way up. Because you'll meet them again on the way down."

There's no doubt Sydney Devine does give his all on stage; a voice-booming-hip-gyrating-brow sweating display that has the ladies of a certain age reaching for the menopause pills.

"The Pavilion audience in Glasgow has been great for me," he admits. "The people from the Glasgow area are a different breed. I don't think I would have made it if I'd launched a career in Aberdeen, for example.

"And after Shirley (his wife, and mother of his three kids) the Glasgow audience is my second love."

Yet, to be so successful for so many years, he must really want to be on stage?

"But I never wanted success," he reveals. "Stardom was an accident. I was quite happy doing the working men's clubs in the likes of Sunderland or North Wales.

"I enjoyed doing it so much and all I ever wanted was to make a living as an entertainer. I never classed it as work."

Sydney grew up in a coal mining village. He was supposed to join a tailor's shop on leaving school. Those jobs he classes 'work'.

"I wanted to be a performer and to make enough to feed my wife and three kids," he says.

"But I'm so lucky I learned so much along the way. With the White Heather Club tour as a teenager I was a whistler, programme seller and curtain-puller. All of this helped me later on.

"I learned everything about the business." He sighs: "It's not like the X Factor kids of today who go out there knowing very little. And often don't last."

But he has lasted, and still performs with fantastic energy despite a near fatal heart attack a few years back.

You suggest he does have one thing in common with the reality show hopefuls: he needed it.

"Yes, and from a very early age. I was singing in old folk's clubs when I was13 for ten bob a night. And when I was up there on stage, I heard that round of applause at the end of the night and I loved it.

"I needed that. But at the same time I never saw success on the horizon."

HE reflects for a moment: "I once met Sheena Easton at Radio Clyde where I worked, when she had just appeared on Esther Rantzen's Little Big Time and Sheena told me she would make it.

"She was so convinced, and of course she was right. But I never once thought like that."

Was Sydney's contained ambition reflective of a lesser belief in his talent as a singer? Not a bit off it, you discover when you ask why he once indicated in an interview he was upset to be considered 'Scotland's Daniel O'Donnell'.

"There's a big difference between me and Daniel," he maintains with a twinkle in his eyes. "I can sing. I've got a voice that runs to three octaves."

And a Pavilion audience that adores him.

l Sydney Devine, 40th Anniversary Concert, The Pavilion, Friday 7.30pm and Saturday, 2pm and 7.30pm.