TALK TO ANY RESURGENT POP STAR about their comeback and the stock answer will be 'I've never been away'. In an era of gold radio, Top of the Pops 2 and I Love The 1980s-style nostalgia TV shows, there's now little reason for stars of yester-year not to 'bop till they drop'. Many, however, have to settle for making a living from playing smaller venues, topping up their bank balance with appearances on the 'holiday-camp circuit', where like-minded music-lovers gather out of season to roll back the years and indulge in a nostalgia-fest for the 1950S, 196os, 1970S or even 1980s.

      Perhaps it's because he had to wait a decade for stardom, travelling the length and breadth of the country fronting the rock 'n' roll band The Sunsets, that Shakin' Stevens has never had to follow that path. Instead, and ably abetted by some shrewd management, the officially accredited Most Successful Chart Act of the 1980s has retained his status as a headlining live attraction.

      Though record success later dipped at home as new acts took the limelight, he carefully concentrated his efforts on European markets, especially in Scandinavia, where his following remained strongest and he was able to fill8,000-seater venues. And, having topped the charts in Denmark in 2004 with a collection of his greatest recorded moments, he reproduced his early successes by taking a CD and DVD release to the UK Top Five - in fact, rarely has a resurgence been so widely acclaimed.

      But it hasn't been an easy ride to fame and fortune. Long before the apprenticeship with The Sunsets, Shaky had had to carve out a career for himself despite leaving school with no qualifications and no prospects. The youngest of eleven children born to a working-class couple in a downmarket Cardiff suburb, he'd scrabbled to make a living by taking jobs from window cleaner through milkman to upholsterer. Yet never did his dedication to rock 'n' roll waver. Indeed it was his love for the music that saw him through the hard times, leaving wife and family at home for most of the year as he toured continental Europe to little financial reward, building up his stagecraft and surfing the disappointment of record deals that failed to earn him more than a token sum.

      He'd never bent to fad or fashion, even when such big breaks as supporting The Rolling Stones in their prestigious 1969 gigs had come to nothing. It never occurred to him to wear flares, grow his hair or 'go hippie' - his way was the only way, and if it took the world time to catch up then that was the way it would have to be, which is of course what made th~ taste of success, when it came, all the sweeter.

      Thus, when Shakin' Stevens pitched up on reality TV talent show Hit Me Baby One More Time in the spring of 2005, he was far from being a washed-up star launching himself in one last desperate attempt to grab the national limelight. In truth, Stevens's appearance was the last brick in a carefully constructed campaign that would see his hits compilation The Collection return him to the spotlight in Britain.

      The product he was promoting was a CD and DVD package that essentially reprised the years between 1980 and 1992 that, for the first half of the 1980s at least, had seen him dominate the UK singles chart over the hipper likes of Adam Ant and Duran Duran. As Guinness World Records British Hit Singles & Albums editor David Roberts explains, the basis for his title of most successful act of the decade is in terms of weeks registered on the chart, rather than sales figures, ensuring the title is indisputable. 'We love to carve up the stats in our database,' says Roberts, 'and one Monday we thought we would find the most successful chart acts of each decade. We came up with Elton John for the 1970S and The Beatles, not surprisingly, for the 1960s. We were amazed when we did the same job on the 1980s, crunched in all the numbers and who should pop up but Shakin' Stevens!

      'He was presented with the Most Successful Chart Act of the 1980s award, which is based on something that, unlike sales figures, can't be hyped. The one thing you can't disagree with is the number of weeks that somebody spent on the UK chart, and he spent more weeks on the UK chart than any other artist in the 1980s.

      'He was churning out all those Number Ones and appealing to a female audience, which was very much what the 1980s were about - but not his type of music. I think that it's like anything: things come back in circles in very regular fashion and rock 'n' roll had been dormant for so long. It only needed someone with a bit of charisma who could carry a song like Elvis used to do, to remind people of how good Elvis was - and Shaky was that man.'

      The big break for Shakin' Stevens had come in 1977 when he was selected to portray the middle-period Elvis in a stage show of the rock 'n' roll legend's life, which was produced by impresario Jack Good in London, just months after the King's untimely death. Shaky not only honed his stagecraft when performing night after night to packed houses, he also caught the eye of the record-company bosses and a manager who would help him make the long-awaited jump to international stardom. He also starred in Jack Good's TV programmes Oh Boy! and Let's Rock, experience that would again prove invaluable in projecting himself into the living rooms of the nation and boosting his singles to the top of the 1980s charts. And as Hit Me Baby One More Time would prove, it was a knack he would not lose.

      Just as the infant medium of television made the original Elvis a star in the mid- I950S - albeit cutting him off at the waist - small-screen exposure would be crucial in returning Shakin'Stevens to the hearts of his fans. Hence his exposure to the public vote. 'If you have a release,' he reasoned, during an interview on LBC, 'you need to promote it, and you need to let people know it's out there or they're not going to buy it. I wouldn't have done Hit Me Baby if I didn't have a release. . . With respect to the other contestants we are all winners anyway, but. . . to me it was. . . a kind of a pride thing. . . They were pleased to get me on their shovv, so we both got a lot out of it.' Hit Me Baby One More Time followed the interactive formula of recent series Reborn In The USA, where the likes of Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet) and Peter Cox (Go West) had been bussed from coast to coast with a number of lesser stars, the public voting someone off the bus at each stop via their telephone. Just as those two vocal talents had seemed a class apart from the competition, so Shaky and Carol Decker, formerly of 1980s hitmakers T'Pau, seemed light years ahead of the likes of Tiffany, Chesney Hawkes, Shalamar, Hue and Cry and boy band 9II.

      It was hard to believe the man strutting and hip-swivelling as to the manner born was now fIfty-seven, but youthful good looks had long been a trademark. As Ian Gomm of the band Brinsley Schwarz, who rubbed shoulders with Shaky on the college circuit in the 197os, says, 'He looks unnaturally young novv, but back then he looked ridiculously young.' As for dying his hair, the natural brunette had been doing that since his youth. Yet what the public saw was not the total package. The Shakin' Stevens whom his fans know is an extrovert whose only intention is to rock 'n' roll. Yet the man born Michael Barratt is a considerably more complex individual who, having enjoyed a wild youth and lived the rock 'n' roll life to the full as frontman of The Sunsets from 1969 to 1977, was later preserved from its worst excesses by a string of decisive and influential managers. Not unlike Elvis Presley, whose interests were also looked after by a strong-willed mentor, it was sometimes the case that Shaky was insulated from normal everyday life in order to keep the focus firmly on his all-important career.

      A rocked-up version of 'Trouble', first recorded by punky US girl singer Pink, which had been a Top Ten UK hit for her in 2003, was the song on which Shaky's comeback hopes were pinned. He was not known for covering contemporary songs, but a keen eye for unearthing authentic rock 'n' roll material and giving it an 'edge' was a key part of his successful formula. The man who helped him in that quest was bassist and producer Stuart Colman, and the fact that he was back on board after more or less two decades' absence confirmed that Shakin' Stevens meant business.

      British Hit Singles & Albums editor David Roberts feels that it's this dangerous 'edge' that helped Shaky cross boundaries - females wanted him, males wanted to be like him. 'There were one or two other [rock 'n' roll acts] like Showaddywaddy who had a good female fan base, but Shaky's fan base crossed over. He's one of these artists who, where the charts are concerned, had super success because he was able to satisfy the demands of two different fan bases.'

      It must also be noted that, though he had been more or less invisible in Britain in the past decade, his European fan base - the same one that had let him play the same venues in the 1980s as The Rolling Stones, and Spandau Ballet had remained faithful. The 2004 Langelands Festival had given him the opportunity to play to 25,000 people and many more on television, proof that he was far from a spent force.

      The challenge now was to reconnect with his British fans while hoping to impress a few thousand who perhaps hadn't even been born in his chart heyday. And that was where Hit Me Baby One More Time came in. Having strolled through his heat with little 'Trouble', for Shakin Stevens it would be up to the nation to set the seal on his comeback. But then he'd never been away. . .