When Ali Campbell spoke to Chris Evans about next year’s CarFest, he also looked ahead to his band’s arena tour, and took a trip down memory lane. 

UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell have been announced for Chris’ festival, CarFest, and tickets for 2024 have gone on sale this morning (15th November). Ali and his band join the likes of Scouting For Girls, Beverley Knight, Sam Ryder, Olly Murs and Deacon Blue at Laverstoke Park Farm next August bank holiday, with loads more acts and attractions still to be revealed.

Joining the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with cinch, Ali enthused about CarFest and his band’s own Hits Tour for 2024, saying: “We’re having a great time at the moment. We’re supposed to be going out on an arena tour before we do the CarFest thing. Laverstoke Park, that’s just around the corner from me!”

Before CarFest takes place, UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell’s run of shows begins on 6th April, and will feature special guest, Bitty McLean. Ali told Chris: “We’ll be taking in Dublin and Liverpool, Glasgow, Leeds, London, Brum, Cardiff, Nottingham. This is all after I come back from Uganda and Abu Dhabi.”

Speaking to Chris about his beginnings as a founder of UB40, the Birmingham-born singer and songwriter said: “I suppose you could say we were disenfranchised youth of Thatcher’s Britain. That’s what all the press used to say. Basically, we were all unemployed, we didn’t have any prospects of a job. For three years, we’d been unemployed. And then we decided to get a band together. And we were very lucky. We were at the right place at the right time, I suppose.

“And within six months, we’d learned our instruments and we made an album and our first album sold eight million copies.”

He continued: “We’d only played a half-a-dozen gigs that year, our first year of playing, and Chrissie Hynde of The Pretenders came and saw us. She was number one at the time, and she invited us on a British tour, which was 35 dates.

“So we did that, released a single and it went to number four. And the rest is history.”

A founding member and lead-vocalist of UB40, Campbell left the band in 2008 and now fronts UB40 Featuring Ali Campbell. He said: “This band that I’m fronting now, we’ve been to 70 countries in the last five years. We’re the most travelled reggae band in the world.

“And I love being on stage with the new set that we’re doing. We’ve got a great guest in Frank Benbini, the drummer from the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, and he’s playing percussion with us now.”