It’s no secret that our man Suggs has been known to enjoy his drink a bit too much, from time to time. If not incessantly. The subject has been explicitly addressed in songs like “Lovestruck” and “Alcohol,” not to mention the way Suggs still manages to bungle the verses of “My Girl” after 45 years of practice. Or heaven forbid, when he dares to tackle a new song onstage without the aid of a teleprompter. So it was unfortunate that the news that Suggs has stopped drinking broke around the time of April 1, 2025. It surely seemed a cruel April Fool’s joke to propose that the jolly old Dean Martin of the surviving 2-Tone pantheon would conceivably stumble his slurring way onto the wagon.
But this was not a dream. Not a hoax. Not an imaginary story. In a candid interview on the BBC’s Headliners with Nihal Arthanayake, Suggs got as serious as he ever gets (which is to say, in between wisecracks and asides about his wife Anne keeping tabs on him via walkie-talkies) about his admission of alcoholism and decision to make this change in his life at age 64. The brief US tour in May 2025 marks the debut of the newly sober Suggs, and I’m excited to witness that first show in Sacramento. Congratulations to you, Mr. McPherson!
The full audio recording of the Headliners interview is available on BBC.com and as a podcast episode. It’s highly recommended listening for all Madness fans, and much more illuminating than the snippets that have appeared in press article. Below are a few highlights, starting with the cheeky way Suggs brought up the topic.
Funny enough, one of the big revelations of the last couple of months is I gave up drinking, which has sent shockwaves around the whole borough. There was actually a day of mourning with all the off-licenses and local pubs. They had a procession dressed in black and they had a big beer bottle in a hearse with R.I.P., it went past my house. It was very sad. I had to close the curtain, there’s a quick word by the missus on the walkie-talkie to shut the curtain. [Laughs.]
In all seriousness, yeah, I’ve been drinking for 40-odd years and it just sort of, it ran its course. Which is strange because it’s been so intertwined in every element of my life, you know. When I think as a kid, that part of our culture, certainly in those days, my mum worked in pubs, I was hanging around in pubs, you know, you met girls in pubs, you play pool, darts, weddings, funerals, birthdays, and you know, going to see bands then, leading on for that, and getting gigs, the only gigs we could get were in pubs. So it’s a bit of a sort of mind blow, and I haven’t had a drink for a little while, passing all these sort of ghostly places that I used to, you know, sit about getting drunk in is kind of odd.
… To be perfectly honest, yeah, you know, I’ve been a bit sort of jocular about it. But no, it did get a bit serious, yeah. I mean, it was alcoholism, and it’s a horrible thing to admit to yourself. Because you’re like, I was a drunk, you know. “I was a good drinker, I was a bad drinker.” And then you know, my family started to suggest I was getting a bit, you know… but I tell you that’s the downside of giving up drinking, is you start looking through the backs of magazines buying walkie-talkies because you’re bored you’ve got nothing on. [Laughs.] But, no, it was a bit of both, yeah, medically I was getting a bit, I didn’t realise how alcohol affects your brain as well as your body, you know. And I went to see an addiction therapist and he just said, “You’ve got to stop,” basically.
So, it was a sort of fait accompli, which was hard, but it’s mostly habitual, you know. It’s, any addiction, it’s different, you know, it’s hard to say when it stops being fun. You know what I mean? It was fun. You know, I’ve got so many great memories, you know, with the band, especially the sort of occupational hazard, but all that euphoria and sort of wildness, which comes with being slightly oblivious. [Laughs.]
But then, you know, it stops being fun. And for about five years, maybe more, it kind of stopped being fun. So it was just tough.
… And Anne said she felt it was a bit like those recently, when they found out as babies, they’ve been swapped in the hospital. She thought, I’ve been swapped with somebody else since I stopped drinking. [Laughs.] … Because when you’re drinking too much, it just becomes your sole, you know, raison d’être, and just being uninterested, basically, in anything other than myself and sittin’ there getting drunk. … I mean, I can say, most normal people, you can have a nice drink like you said, go to the pub after you’ve done a bit of work. But this was just becoming sort of daily occurrence and it was just wearing and boring really. I became boring. That’s the sort of main word, and now I’m not, apparently. [Laughs.]
… I mean, it was a physiology, you know, like you get older and you can’t cope with probably the amounts that I used to drink when I was younger anyway. And the hangovers were getting so, you know, like two days, sort of wiped out of your life, all that kind of, you know, stuff that you hear. But it’s amazing, you know, I got involved with people in addiction therapy and just how much of it there is around, you know, really is a massive thing. And it’s just that thin line between drinking socially and drinking unsocially, and kind of ruining in your life, basically, which is where I was sort of headed.
… It is very uncomfortable, yeah [to call himself an alcoholic]. And as I say, you put that off ’cause it does mean that you’re gonna have to stop. And I just remember the relief when I first said that word. Because it’s just, it’s so not me, you know. I wasn’t. And I didn’t really get into any really negative or destructive kind of elements or life. But it was just, it’s just when the drink becomes more important than anybody or anything else. That’s what was happening. You know, I’m so glad I did. It’s kind of like a way, a bit like, I think Oscar Wilde said when he lost his libido and he said, “It’s like being unshackled from a lunatic.” [Laughs.] Kind of like, he’s just got his thing in your ear. “Come on, let’s have a drink. Come on, only one more. Come on, let’s go out,” you know, whatever, whatever. It just goes on and on and on.
[The rest of the band is aware of the news.] Yeah, yeah. And in fact, a couple of the others packed up a little while ago. And so many of my friends without naming names about my age in this industry. I mean, loads, I could tell you loads, all packed up around being 60. And I think that, you know, 40 years, I didn’t miss out, you know, really didn’t. I did, you know, every single thing that one can associate with, you know, drunken lunacy. I’m lucky to tell the tale, really. And it’s funny, it’s just like a kind of new beginning in some, without being sort of getting too righteous about it. For me, anyway.
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