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Coming up: Badly Drawn Boy Irish dates

Badly Drawn Boy returns to Ireland next week
Badly Drawn Boy returns to Ireland next week Badly Drawn Boy returns to Ireland next week

HE'S been pretty quiet for the past couple of years but now Badly Drawn Boy AKA Damon Gough is back on the road and headed for Ireland next week.

The be-hatted Bolton troubadour will kick off his latest tour at The Limelight 2 in Belfast on Tuesday, followed by dates in Dublin, Limerick and Cork.

Having endured a turbulent time following the end of his marriage, Gough has been laying low of late: his last album was 2012's soundtrack LP Being Flynn and it took an anniversary tour celebrating 15 years of his 2000 Mercury Prize-winning debut The Hour of The Bewilderbeast to get him back on stage again.

Busy "putting my life back together" for the past three years, the infamously erratic singer-songwriter – who developed a reputation for onstage 'meltdowns' – has recently been working on a new record.

However, it seems fans shouldn't expect the Badly Drawn Boy version of the classic 'break-up album' a la Dylan's Blood on The Tracks or Rumours by Fleetwood Mac.

"Losing a relationship is one of the hardest things you can go through, but everyone needs to move on," explained Gough in a recent interview with the Bournemouth Echo.

"For me, especially as I write personally, it's very difficult, and for a while, I just didn’t know what to write.

"The climate as it is, with more and more reality TV, everybody giving everything of themselves, that's what's expected – but I won't be down about it."

:: Tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster outlets.