IT’S hard to believe that King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys have been serving up their own fun-filled version of early rock and roll to audiences for 30 years.

As the ultimate party band prepare for a date at Darwen Library Theatre tomorrow night, it’s certainly got front man and founder Mark Skirving, aka King Pleasure, wondering where the time has gone.

“The pot belly’s arrived and the hair’ gone grey but it’s still damned good fun,” he said. “It’s one of those great things you do as a kid or young chap for fun,then luckily someone is foolish enough to pay your for it and you find out that you can do it for a living.”

The seeds for what would become King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys were sown at an early age.

“I just remember being seven and they were putting a play on at school - I think it was Daniel and the Lion’s Den - and two of the teachers played this music on the piano,” said Mark.

“I was so excited by it I couldn’t stop laughing and giggling at what they were doing, it was brilliant. I didn’t know it then but I now know that what they were doing was playing boogie woogie and it just got me.

“From there as I got older it opened up the whole 50s rock and roll thing of Fats Domino and Little Richard in particular and it just went from there.

“As I grew older and started being able to buy records, like all record collector you find out what’s gone before it and what influenced the music you like and that then got me into the blues and the jazz and all different kinds of things.”

With the band Mark is both frontman and occasional sax player.

“As a kid I had piano lessons at school then when we tried to get something together, the only thing we could do was busking,” he said. “So I bought a saxophone and went out with a chap with a double bass. We called ourselves Some Like it Hot after the film and then I started singing as well which drew a crowd and we sort of formed a band around it.

“I really took up the sax because it was portable. But I’m no great musician, I’ve never really mastered the sax. I just consider myself the singer and just join in with introductions and endings on sax and leave the rest to the main bloke.”

The enjoyment, after all these years, remains obvious.

“Lots of people just put a band together for the sake of it,” said Mark. “But I just had a strange love of a particular kind of music and desperately wanted to recreate it and was excited about doing it.

“It’s the same with the rest of the band and hopefully that comes across in our shows.

“Even now, a live show is one of those things you always look forward to. They are just great fun.”

When he has some spare time - which isn’t often given the band’s hectic schedule which takes them all over Europe - Mark is an accomplished artist having had several exhibitions of his work. But music remains his first love.

“Thirty years doing what I love, you couldn’t make it up!” he said.

King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys, Darwen Library Theatre, Friday, June 8. details from 0844 847 1664 or www.darwenlibrarytheatre.com