A FEW weeks ago Clare Grogan found herself onstage again with her former Altered Images band mate Johnny McElhone for the first time in years.

Texas were playing gigs in Glasgow and London, and McElhone, their guitarist, asked Clare if she fancied popping on and singing a couple of songs.

“Doing that was very emotional and it really took me back to being that slightly clueless bunch of people, who ended up doing alright for themselves,” laughs Clare, on typically bubbly form.

“He just asked if I fancied going onstage to sing, and the dates worked out. It was all really simple, and our families were there cheering us on. It reminded me that this stuff is special.”

While Clare will always be best known for Gregory’s Girl, her Altered Images stint brought her to the pop charts and Top of the Pops, serving up several hits.

Since then the 55-year-old has bounded across a dizzying number of careers. There’s Clare Grogan the actress, then there’s the TV and radio presenter (when we chat she’s just heading to a production meeting for her new show on Absolute 80s), as well as writing a series of children’s books and being a mum.

Now, for the first time in over a decade, she is going back out on the road again, touring with fellow 80s stalwarts Midge Ure and the Christians, a jaunt that will stop at the Royal Concert Hall on Tuesday.

This isn’t a tour with Altered Images, she stresses, as she’ll be playing with a house band each night, but why go back to such a gruelling routine, where she’ll play 32 shows over several weeks?

“The thing is, it’s all about getting to be on that stage and getting to perform every night, and I’m really out of the way of that,” she says.

“I’m going to embrace this, because, and I’m not just saying this, but I’m not sure whether this will happen again. With the Altered Images songs, I never take anything for granted because I keep thinking the bubble will burst, so I will just take it all as it comes.”

That was a similar approach that Clare and the rest of her old band had back in the day. She would finish school one day, then be travelling in a van to London the next for a John Peel session the next.

Then they hit the mainstream, appearing on Top of the Pops and taking everything in their stride, at least on the surface.

“People still talk to me about those really big hats I used to wear, but pretty much I was hiding myself under there,” she recalls.

“Under all this fake bravado I was really thinking ‘oh my God, what am I doing here on Top of the Pops?’ As I’ve got older I’ve realised being nervous is part of who I am – it doesn’t feel right if I’m not nervous.”

Glasgow in the late 70s and early 80s was just as much a hotbed for musical talent as it was now. However while certain acts allegedly rubbed each other up the wrong way (Orange Juice and Lloyd Cole, for instance) Clare’s memories of the scene are purely positive.

“Everyone you knew was in a band or was a roadie or was doing something,” she says.

“There seemed to be A & R men in the city every weekend looking to see who they would sign next. It was a glorious period of Scottish pop. There was always a rivalry with some bands, but there was a genuine happiness at seeing someone you knew on Top of the Pops.

“We all came from the most non showbizy families around, and there was maybe a competitiveness that spurred us all on a bit, but there was an appreciation as well.”

She continues to act, with a role earlier this year in Delirium, and freely admits she has no grand plan, simply taking things as they come. However after the tour she will be glad to get back to looking after her daughter, Ella – even if the teenager has views on some of her mum’s career choices.

“Being a mum, I can’t work all the time because it doesn’t work for us as a family,” she says.

“Everything slowly but surely grinds to a disorganised situation, so I have to look at that too, and I love being a mum as much as I love working. It can be funny though - my daughter found the DVD set of Legit (a BBC Scotland comedy Clare was in) and wanted to watch it.

“I said there was a bit too much in it for her and she just looked at me and said ‘mum, why are you still making inappropriate TV programmes?’”

Clare Grogan, Royal Concert Hall, Tuesday, £28.50, 7pm