Del Amitri singer: I want Parkinson’s to make the choice to end my touring days

Justin Currie has said that he wants his degenerative illness Parkinson’s to make the decision on whether he should stop touring.

The Del Amitri lead singer and Scottish musician, 59, revealed his diagnosis earlier this month.

He has been struggling to play his band’s hit song Nothing Ever Happens, which he told the Sunday Times Weekend magazine you need “quite a strong arm” for, and has continued to tour.

Currie said: “You also need a relaxed wrist but I couldn’t do two things at once. If I tried, I’d lose the grip on the plectrum (and) get stuck in the strings. You just become more and more of an amateur. Your body’s like this.”

He says calling his Parkinson’s tremor, a “shake” sounds “horrific” so he has named it Gavin to give him some control over the condition, which causes parts of the brain to become progressively damaged over many years.

Currie also said it is “a way of humanising the thing inside you that’s not human because the disease feels like some kind of nemesis”.

Despite continuing to perform, he says that there is “nothing dignified, at any age, in bopping about on stage, singing your own lyrics and desperately trying to get people to watch you”.

He added: “So I don’t mind losing my dignity in the sense of the Parkinson’s affecting me.

“As long as I’m not driven by some mad obsession to keep going, which I’m not.”

Explaining why he thinks Parkinson’s should make that decision, he said it “would be utterly heartbreaking so, (I want to) let Gavin be the one to say it.

“Gavin goes, ‘Nah, I ain’t playing!’ Then, fine, I’m done.”

He also said that he was not “horrified” by knowing about Parkinson’s as he was aware of his symptoms due to Back To The Future film series star Michael J Fox disclosing details of living with the condition.

Scottish comedian Sir Billy Connolly and Black Sabbath star Ozzy Osbourne have also been diagnosed with the disease.

Currie revealed his condition on BBC Radio 4’s Tremolo documentary programme on March 10 and was interviewed by BBC One’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg.

Del Amitri formed in Glasgow in 1980, have had six albums in the top 10 in the UK albums chart.

According to the NHS website, Parkinson’s is characterised by involuntary shaking of parts of the body, as well as slow movement and stiff muscles, is caused by a loss of nerve cells in part of the brain called the substantia nigra.