IT is almost two decades since the demise of The Smiths, a group whose biggest single reached the less than dizzy heights of No 10 in the charts, yet their former singer will spend the next two months savouring the adulation of sell-out crowds at the country's biggest venues.
Although he has not released a consistently great album since 1994's Vauxhall and I, Morrissey, 46, is doing more than merely tapping into the lucrative nostalgia market. People will not go to see him for a one-off reminder of their youth – most of the audience listen regularly to his albums.
Many adults cringe when they look back at the music they liked as adolescents. Few move on from Morrissey. His early acolytes have long since left their bedsits, but their faith in Steven Patrick Morrissey is still devout. He inspires lasting devotion. Morrissey is a cult from which escapees are rare.
The power of the Smiths and of his best solo work is not diminished by time. Because Johnny Marr's music was neither derivative nor particularly influential – dozens of today's young guitar bands namecheck The Smiths, but not many make an attempt to sound like them – it has dated well.
And the words are timeless.
Morrissey is one of the finest and most distinctive lyricists in the history of popular music. To people who like the Mancunian, music is not just background noise or pleasant tunes. It should be loaded with meaning and relevance.
To his disciples, Morrissey has done much more than write songs. He has provided emotional sustenance to the lovelorn, the dispirited and the different. He kept his sexual orientation a mystery and his songs of unrequited love are gender-unspecific. His message was, and remains, that it does not matter.
He gives great confidence to outsiders, because he was an outsider himself: "the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar", he spent his youth sitting in his room writing articles for fanzines and letters to magazines.
Had he not been The Smiths' singer, one imagines that he would have been their most ardent fan, because his appeal is strongest to the romantically unfulfilled and the sexually inactive – categories into which, until recently, Morrissey placed himself.
On leaving school with few qualifications, he was unemployed before finding unsatisfying work as a hospital porter. This period in his life inspired the line "I was looking for a job and then I found a job, and heaven knows I'm miserable now".
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now became one of The Smiths' signature songs when it was released in 1984 but it became a bit of a millstone, spawning the commonly-held misconception that Morrissey's work is depressing. Titles like Girlfriend in a Coma and Death of a Disco Dancer did not help, and neither did his rather doleful delivery, but there is tremendous wit and humour in the songs.
"There must be brighter sides to life, and I should because I've seen them - but not very often," he sang on Still Ill. To some, who "just don't get it" this is dour and dismal; actress Kathy Burke, who loved The Smiths, called them "hilarious".
Among Morrissey's supporters, who find him both funny and moving, he has almost prophet status. The majority of the audiences will know the majority of the words to the songs, even obscure B-sides; there are hundreds of websites devoted to him; books have been produced to chronicle how his words have changed people's lives; and he has spawned several tribute acts.
Although the crowds will be predominantly made up of men in their thirties and forties, who liked The Smiths in the 1980s, there will be plenty of teenagers, too. Aided by critical acclaim – magazine rankings of 'the greatest albums of all time' invariably have 1986's The Queen is Dead somewhere in the top 10 – Morrissey's appeal cuts across generations as well as across class boundaries.
From the outset, Morrissey's profile was bigger in the press than in the charts. The Smiths were the darlings of the New Musical Express and the other music titles, not least because the singer always provided entertaining quotes, but there was controversy as well as adulation.
Early on, there was one tabloid furore over supposedly paedophilic lyrics, and another over a song about the Moors murders. There were allegations of racism concerning the clumsy, ill-advised Bengali in Platforms, from the début solo album Viva Hate.
Morrissey began to feel persecuted by the press, with increasing self-pity creeping into his lyrics. After responding to the break-up of The Smiths with some storming singles in the late 1980s, he was something of a pariah for much of the 1990s and the early part of this decade.
A couple of underwhelming albums had been poorly received, and he was seen
as out of kilter with the
chirpy spirit of Britpop, a movement for which indie bands like The Smiths paved the way.
Having seen his stock fall in the music press, the most quintessentially English of lyricists, the man who wrote "another sunny day, so we go where we're happy and I meet you by the cemetry (sic) gates" had transported himself to Los Angeles, of all places.
He was without a recording contract and although he still toured to rapturous reception from his fans, he played modest venues.
However, he made a triumphant return two years ago with You are the Quarry and headlined major festivals. The success of Coldplay, Keane and James Blunt – none of whom is fit to primp Morrissey's quiff – have shown that introspection and mild melancholia are popular again.
The concerts, though, will not be an exercise in wistfulness. The fey, willowy youth who sported gladioli in his back pocket was always a marvellous showman on stage and his shows will be raucous affairs, particularly when Morrissey dips into his back catalogue.
He will come on to football-style chants, he will fling his shirt off and he will whip crowds into a frenzy.
"I know it's over," lamented the refrain to one of his best songs. Not for Morrissey, it isn't.
Morrissey's album Ringleader of the Tormentors is out on April 3 and the single You Have Killed Me is released on Monday.

Choicest lines
l There's a club if you'd like to go,
You could meet somebody who really loves you,So you go and you stand on your own and you leave on your own, And you go home and you cry and you want to die.
(How Soon is Now)
l To pretend to be happy could only be idiocy.
(What She Said)
l I look at yours but you laugh at mine, And love is just a miserable lie.
(Miserable Lie)
l Spending warm summer days indoors, Writing frightening verse to a bucked-tooth girl in Luxembourg.
(Ask)
l I've been stabbed in the back so many, many times, I don't have any skin.
(Why Don't You Find Out For Yourself)
l Wish I had the charm to attract the one I love, But you see, I've got no charm.
(Seasick, Yet Still Docked)
l Some girls are bigger than others, Some girls' mothers are bigger than other girls' mothers.
(Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others)

Morrissey cv
l Born: Steven Patrick Morrissey, 22 May 1959, Manchester.
l Morrissey's mother was a librarian. His father was a hospital porter.
l A well-known film buff, he once lived in an apartment formerly owned by Greta Garbo and a house built by Clark Gable.
l When asked to name his top 10 favourite British albums, he replied he could only think of one, For Your Pleasure by Roxy Music.
l Swedish author and Morrissey fan Peter Birro claims that track Angel, Angel, Down We Go Together saved him from committing suicide.
l Before he moved to America, Morrissey was a neighbour of playwright Alan Bennett in London and the pair became friends.
l Celebrity Morrissey fans include the usually miserable Liam Gallagher, Marilyn Manson and Thom Yorke as well as the permanently cheerful Ricky Gervais, Jonathan Ross and Harry Hill.