YOU could forgive Wilko Johnson of all people for wanting to take things easy.

After a cancer diagnosis in 2013, he was given less than a year to live; he embarked on an emotional farewell tour and recorded what everyone presumed would be his final album - Going Back Home with the Who’s Roger Daltrey.

But after radical treatment Wilko’s miracle happened. He was declared cancer free and headed back out on to the road.

Now he’s preparing to release his first album of new material in 30 years and has a date at Manchester Academy next Saturday.

“After my illness and operation, when I got back on the road they said they would try and make things as easy as possible for me,” he said. “The idea was that because we would be doing bigger gigs I’d have more time off in between. But I just found myself sitting at home and moping around. We just want to be out there doing it.”

Any conversation with Wilco is peppered with him chuckling away as thoughts strike him.

“I am a miserable so and so really,” he said. “I think the only time I’m happy is when I’m playing. That’s what I enjoy.”

Now 70, Wilko admits that his brush with death has changed his outlook on life.

“It is kind of hard now. I have to stop and think about my situation in this world - it’s weird,” he said. “It’s impossible for me now to look back on that year when I had cancer and recapture those feelings because believe me they certainly were strange old feelings.

“But every now and then you just walk down the street and suddenly think ‘blimey I should have been gone three years ago’.”

With his band - bassist Norman Watt Roy and drummer Dylan Howe, Wilko has recorded the album Blow Your Mind.

“We recorded it in a very similar way to the album I did with Roger Daltry, the same producers, the same studio. We did the whole thing in two weeks and I’m very pleased with it.

“In recording studios you can go in and spend as long as you like. Sometimes that’s not necessarily an advantage.

“Rock and roll, certainly the kind I indulge in, should be an immediate thing. I don’t think it’s an advantage trying to make it sophisticated.

“I remember recording with Roger Daltrey was very weird for me. I was due to die about then and thought it would be the last thing I ever did so we only had about eight days in the studio, but it was just so good. That showed me that when you’re recording an album, don’t stop and think, thinking is fatal.”

After a lifetime at the forefront of British R&B and his high profile cancer issues Wilko is perhaps more well know than he has ever been.

“There is a whole other bunch of people who know me as a sword wielding person in Game of Thrones,” he said.

He memorably played an executioner in the epic fantasy TV show.

“John Cooper Clark was telling me he was in America talking to people about Game of Thrones and mentioned that he knew me and they were saying ‘what he plays the guitar as well?’”

With his new album out in June and a UK tour selling fast, Wilko is clearly in his element.

“Most people of my advanced years are thinking about pensions but I don’t want to do that,” he laughed. “I just want to keep on playing.”

Wilko Johnson with Hugh Cornwell and Mollie Marriott, Manchester Academy, Saturday, May 12. Details from 0161 832 1111