“IT reminds me of being on the Queen Mary,” Chris Difford is telling me. “I did some afternoon shows on that. All they wanted to do was have people eat in the evening because that’s where they made their money.”

Monday, 5pm in the bar at the Assembly Checkpoint. Difford, who you will know as a long-time member of Squeeze, is wearing a Fred Perry top and sipping a San Pellegrino soft drink beside his mucker Boo Hewerdine.

Some 20 minutes ago they were both on stage. Yes, an afternoon show. Difford was telling stories about his life – inappropriate seductions, drug-tinged reminiscences, his years in Squeeze, that time he ended up as Bryan Ferry’s “chauffeur” (Bryan even bought him a cap), and going into rehab for his drink and drug problem – as well as singing the songs that have given him that life; Labelled with Love, Pulling Mussels from a Shell, Cool for Cats.

It’s a joyful, blokey hour and, this afternoon, a sell-out. Difford and Hewerdine are delighted and in a slight state of disbelief.

What it is not, I suggest when we finally sit down together, a misery memoir show. “Good,” says Difford. “There’s too much misery. I don’t think my life is like that, really. Obviously, there have been darker moments, but I own those moments. I enjoyed them for what they were. I don’t need everybody to hear about them all the time.”

This isn’t the first time Difford has played the Edinburgh Fringe. He did a show with Norman Lovett five years ago, he recalls. Difford would sing and talk while a film played. Lovett would come on and tell jokes.

“He was very good at it, Difford says, “but he kept taking over. I couldn't control him.”

Do you know your place, Boo?

“I do know my place, yeah. I do pipe upon occasion. I had a bit today, but you kept talking. You said: ‘We've both been looking at Peters and Lee videos. And I wanted to say ‘Well, one of us has.’”

“I'll leave a gap tomorrow,” Difford says, laughing. “That's great.”

Difford is now in his early sixties and is looking back on a career that dates back almost five decades. He’s written a memoir which is now out in paperback and he’s been doing the song and storytelling show with Hewerdine for some time now. “It’s totally the opposite expression of being in a band,” he admits.

He is clearly enjoying it. What, I wonder, is his relationship with those Squeeze songs after all these years. “Well, I've only just come to own those songs in the last five or 10 years really because Glenn sang them all, so I never thought they were mine until I began to learn to sing them.”

Really, but you wrote them? “Well, I did write the lyrics, but when you don't sing them you just think … Well, I thought anyway, ‘Glenn sings’. Now I feel total co-ownership of those songs. And they're amazing songs. Very lucky to have written them.”

He hasn’t stopped writing. Difford and Hewerdine have been working on a new album, entitled Pants, which is out soon. They’re both excited at the prospect. It draws on a body of songs they worked on called Fancy Pants, which Difford explains, was going to be a musical.

“We wrote the songs before the book which is a mistake, but we're still looking at it. It's a great body of songs and it tells a story of a man's midlife crisis. We were just talking today about going back and having a look at it.”

That’s next year’s Fringe show, surely. “Well, Fancy Pants would work here, that's for sure. But we've got another idea we're looking at.”

Time go to. They have to check in to their hotel and maybe go and see the odd show. But not many. “I don’t have the energy,” admits Difford.

We all get older, of course. Even songwriters. These days Chris Difford is not writing about teenage romance any more. “I'm writing songs about incontinence. And sucking food rather than eating it.”

I think he’s joking.

Chris Difford: Some Fantastic Place, My Life in and out of Squeeze, with Boo Hewerdine continues at the Assembly Checkpoint, Bristo Place at 3.30pm until Sunday.