MIKE McGear McCartney, photographer, member of iconic band Scaffold, not to mention brother of Beatle Paul, has such a wealth of anecdotes and stories about growing up in Liverpool that it's a wonder he's only now touring the country with a one-man show, Sex, drugs & rock ‘n’ roll (i wish!), that opens his family album to wider view.

When you learn that a fellow apprentice, when he thought hairdressing was where his future lay, was Professionals star Lewis Collins and a stylist also working at Andre Bernard was Jimmy Tarbuck, you can be pretty sure that an evening with Mike will prove hugely entertaining.

"The evening is me and my pictures," says Mike. "And one of those is the hairdressers but you'd never guess because they look like Mafia!"

All I'm doing is telling you about my life," he explains, adding, for anyone who might think otherwise, "it's nothing to do with Our Kid."

Last summer he dined at the Library of Congress in Washington DC with Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, Dave Grohl, Elvis Costello, and next day in the White House found himself chatting with President Obama and family at his brother's Gershwin Prize presentation.

"I went to Washington in 2005, when my exhibition, Mike McCartney's Liverpool Life, my photos of working class Liverpool, was on at the Smithsonian. It turned out to be so popular that it lasted for a year and 2.5 million visitors saw it. Then five years later when our kid was getting the Gershwin prize I found myself standing next to the president having my photo taken."

But Mike is far from starstruck. "Mary, my niece, was there and said 'Uncle Mike, you can't call the the president of the US that.' Call him what, I said, what did I call him?" Apparently, as the family assembled for another picture, Mike asked 'Where's the prezzie?".

It was only when he gave up his musical life that Mike returned to the family name of McCartney, having changed it to avoid being seen as riding on the coat tails of Our Kid. "The first name we came up with was Dangerfield, so I might have been Mike Dangerfield, or even Mike McFab, fab being the other word that was common currency at the time.

It's photography though that's been the constant thread through Mike's life, dubbed Flash Harry by Brian Epstein, as the flash of his camera was the easiest way to locate him in darkened music venues.

"I learned to love photography when I was a kid. We were living in Folshon Road and the family had a box brownie camera which was only used on special occasions as there was no money to develop the films.

"But there were these seagulls out in our yard and they were swooping like eagles, so I thought that Dad wouldn't mind me using the camera when he saw the pictures.

"Then I waited for the film to be developed and rushed to the chemist to pick them up. Walking home I looked through them and there was no sign of my albatrosses. I began to think I'd got the wrong pictures, but, no, there was Uncle Albert, and Our Kid and Ieventually came to a picture covered in black dots and the penny dropped.

"There's more to this photography than meets the eye, " I thought, and got on the bus to the library where I borrowed every book I could find and learned photography the hard way, which is the best way.

I developed and printed my photos in my back bedroom - I had to wait until it got dark, as it was my bedroom, and I used haridressers clips as they were perfect for handing up the prints to dry.

I was throwing out some books recently and a small print fell out and I knew it was from that period at Folshon road because you could see the edge of the hairdresser's clip on it.

It's been 42 years since Mike was on stage, and he's never done it alone until now.

"This is the first time I have done a one man show, and it's happening because of Tim Quinn, the former editor of Marvel comics. We were going to do a comic together, but then I got busy and it went away. But he rang recently and said he'd been approached by a US university professor who was bringing over a group of students to Liverpool and asked if I'd meet them. I told him I couldn't do that as I had a date at a little bookshop, Literally, and he asked if the group could come along. I said yes, but I did wonder what I was going to do.

Tim said he'd ask me questions and I'd answer them. "Couldn't be easier," he said. The students arrived and he decided I didn't need questions, so I started with "I was born at the end of 1944 ..."

The next morning Tim rang and said the professor and students said they'd learned more from me than from all the books they'd read.

He followed that with 'What do you think about doing a one-man show?" My first thought was 'who the hell would come out to see me?"

The stream of anecdotes is endless - fascinating, funny and surprising - and you have to suspect that the show could very well overrun.

"That's the great thing about this tour," says Mike. "I could do it for ever."