UB40 are one of the biggest bands in Britain, and one of the country’s leading musical exports. Think about it. Their combined single and album sales are in excess of 70 million, which puts them in that elite category populated by the stellar likes of Oasis, The Police, Robbie Williams and Muse; they’ve had a staggering 51 hit singles, which is more than any other British outfit apart from Status Quo (and, yes, that includes The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, U2 and everyone else); and they’ve had Number 1 smash hits in virtually every chart on the planet, including the notoriously hard-to-crack American market.

Factor in their astonishing track record with regard to gigs and history of performing in the most unlikely places imaginable, from the former Soviet Union to Tonga, New Caledonia and Australasia – and of course they have broken numerous attendance records (Largest-ever attendance at a show in South Africa! One billion plus TV audience at the Bollywood Awards!) – and you’ve got one seriously popular band.

One thing is beyond dispute: UB40 are the world’s most popular reggae act, matched in terms of influence only by Bob Marley & The Wailers. UB40 have for almost three decades now been ambassadors of a musical form that is barely four decades old, seeing it through virtually from its infancy in the mid-‘70s to maturity today. Without them - who knows? - Reggae might not have spread so far and wide, been such a powerful and pervasive musical genre. In fact, the band have done as much to popularise reggae globally as Robert Nesta himself. Bob Marley would be proud to witness the way UB40 have continued his legacy and programme of bringing together races and creeds; indeed, UB40’s multi-cultural line-up can be seen as a blueprint for a more tolerant future society in the world we hope to live in.

To consider the impact of UB40 on generations of fans is to consider the impact of reggae itself. As much as the boys respect the giants of reggae, the pioneers of ska, rocksteady and soul from the ‘60s and early ‘70s, those forebears of the reggae sound have themselves queued up to pay tribute to the Birmingham band. The Mighty Diamonds, Freddie McGregor, John Holt, Toots Hibbert, Gregory Isaacs, Alton Ellis, Max Romeo, Ken Boothe, Leroy Sibbles and more all collaborated with UB40 on their 2002 collection, UB40 Present “The Fathers Of Reggae.”

The boyhood friends from the inner-city areas of Birmingham, these self-taught musicians of English, Scottish, Irish , Yemeni and Jamaican parentage, whose multi-raced line-up has always seemed like a microcosm of modern, multi-cultural Britain, started off by refusing to ‘play the game’ and kow-tow to the suits and big-wigs, and they aren’t exactly going to start now.

From their early songs of dole-queue frustration and Cold War alienation to their current status as untouchable yet down-to-earth exponents of blue-collar skank’n’roll, UB40, named after the unemployment form given out by the DHSS, have combined musical excellence with social conscience in a way that remains unrivalled in this or any other era. They provided a dissenting voice in Thatcher’s Britain, with its dreadful record of employment and war-mongering, and they’re still doing so today, a lone voice in the wilderness, railing with righteous indignation against overseas adventurism and insidious policies.

Long may they continue to do their own thing and sing their own song.