Tom Robinson on the road, in the studio, and on the airwaves

After penning his gay anthem Robinson later began a relationship with a woman and subsequently became a father. He still identifies as gay, however, so as he looks back 37 years to the late 1970s then re-focusses his eyes on the here and now, does he also rub them in wonder at the stage British society has reached? Or did he always have faith that acceptance would come eventually?

“No, my eyes are red with being rubbed in wonder,” he says with a wry laugh. “I still pinch myself on a daily basis. I find it so wonderful and amazing and life-affirming and hard to believe that the level of acceptance we've reached is so great. It's not nirvana and I think it's still tough for a kid aged 13, 14, 15 coming to terms with themselves today in a heterosexual family. They still have to struggle to find themselves and find their community. But it's a lot easier than it was.”

(Sing If You're) Glad To Be Gay wasn't Robinson's only contribution to confrontational and thought-provoking rock in the 1970s either. Helped by Danny Kustow's frantic guitar and the propulsive drumming of Dolphin Taylor, who would later join Stiff Little Fingers, Robinson's socially conscious lyrics turned the Tom Robinson Band into a leading member of punk's political wing. The stencilled fist on the cover of TRB's 1978 debut album, Power In The Darkness, will be familiar to anyone who's seen Pussy Riot's famous No Pasaran! t-shirts, and in songs like Up Against The Wall he painted a dystopian vision of a violent, racist Britain. The band's top 10 hit 2-4-6-8 Motorway takes it chorus from a familiar gay liberation chant and Robinson's only other hit, 1983's War Baby, turns Cold War tension and paranoia into a slick, saxophone-driven pop song.

That said, the position the 65-year-old enjoys today as an elder statesman of British music is based as much on his role as a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music as it is his back catalogue or his recent recorded output. After all, it's nearly 20 years since his last studio album.

All that changes this month, however, with the release of Only The Now, a collection of new work featuring contributions from artists as diverse as Billy Bragg, feted American singer-songwriter John Grant and English folk stalwart Martin Carthy.

The album was produced by violinist Gerry Diver, a former member of Shane McGowan's band The Popes who has also worked with Van Morrison.

“I didn't think I would ever go back into the studio,” Robinson says. “Basically it was meeting Gerry, whose work I had been admiring from afar and playing on the radio. He came and approached me and said 'Are you thinking of making a new record any time?' I said 'I thought you'd never ask!'.”

Robinson had never stopped writing songs, but “because of working at 6 Music my musical tastes and the music I knew how to make were diverging at a rate of knots. I really like the songs on the last couple of albums I made, but in terms of the musical vocabulary it's still rooted in the music I grew up with. I think Gerry has managed to bring the whole thing into the 21st century.”

John Grant was recruited after he was interviewed by Robinson on his radio show - “We just really hit it off, so he was very keen to do something” - and among the other contributors are rapper Swami Barracus. Billy Bragg, meanwhile, features on The Mighty Sword Of Justice. It begins with a clip of Oscar winner Colin Firth reading a news report about the government's reforms to the Legal Aid system before taking a swipe at Rebekah Brooks, among others.

As well as that roll call of musical helpmates, Robinson has also been able to call on the services of another actor, Ian McKellen, a friend since the late 1980s when the pair campaigned against the notorious Clause 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act. Invoked by Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government, it legislated against the teaching in schools of “the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship”.

You can hear McKellen on two tracks: One Way Street, a paean to a dead biker, and Holy Smoke, a riotously funny song in which Robinson rolls joints using pages from the scriptures. “I like to smoke the Bible,” he sings, “it makes a crazy toke”. McKellen provides the voice of the Almighty, who turns out to be not at all disturbed by this innovative use of the Good Book. “Me, I'm right behind you,” he booms, “your sins are blown away.”

As an aside, Robinson tells a story about taking his family to visit his friend backstage at London's Old Vic Theatre in 2004 when the actor was playing Widow Twankey in Aladdin. When Robinson's 11-year-old son complained that he only got a handshake while everyone else got a kiss, McKellen duly puckered up. Dropping into a pretty impressive impersonation of the actor, Robinson tells me what happened next: “Ian said 'Now what are you going to tell your friends at school?' and my son said 'I'm going to tell them I met Gandalf in a dress - and he kissed me'.”

It's a great anecdote well told - as you'd expect from a man who has served time on every BBC radio station.

Robinson began his second career as a broadcaster with a guest presenter role on BBC Radio One in the mid-1980s and appeared sporadically on the World Service for a decade from 1985. He has written and presented documentaries on Radio 4 since 1990 and spent a good part of the Noughties standing in for Mark Radcliffe on Radio 2. He has also helmed one-offs with titles like Never Mind The Horlicks: Punk At Middle Age and, more poignantly, made a documentary for Radio 4 in 1994 called Surviving Suicide which drew on his own suicide attempt aged 16.

Clearly, then, he has a talent for broadcasting. “Any egotist who likes the sound of their own voice is going to enjoy talking on the radio,” he agrees. “But it's communication. That's what you're doing when you're writing a lyric and that's what you're doing when you're scripting a documentary. It's all about taking an idea and finding a way that will connect with an audience, whether it's over the airwaves or in the context of a record.”

Today, Robinson is most celebrated as presenter of shows on BBC Radio 6 Music such as his self-titled Saturday evening programme and BBC Introducing, which showcases new bands. It's the inspiration gained from the music he plays on that last programme which really drove him back into the studio, he says. “I wouldn't have made this album without that”.

But while BBC Radio has welcomed him and given him a pulpit of sorts, he remains clear-eyed about the corporation's faults.

“The biggest threat is management,” he says. “When you think there's more than 100 people in the BBC hierarchy who are paid more than the Prime Minister, I don't think that can be justified.

“There are just too many suits. And the frustration is they keep coming in and interfering. They feel they have to justify their job by messing about and making life more difficult for the people who are actually making the programmes.”

Whether Only The Now will put Tom Robinson back on the airwaves in any significant way remains to be seen. But it's certainly taking him out on the road again. Having already performed at festivals including Glastonbury and Latitude - “the response really bowled me over,” he says, "particularly for the new songs” - he and his band begin a 15-date UK tour at the end of month. It arrives in Scotland for three gigs in early November.

“We do about 60% old songs, because I think you have to keep faith with the audience,” he says. “So I can reassure people that they will get Listen To The Radio, Up Against The Wall, 2-4-6-8 Motorway and Glad To Be Gay. But luckily there's few enough of those songs that I can pack them all into the set and still have room for the new stuff!”

He's overly humble in his apparent dismissal of that back catalogue. He may joke about the band's “15 minutes of fame” but there's a deep and abiding legacy there and he knows it. Besides, with a new record, a new lease of musical life and a potential new audience to impress, the clock's still ticking.

Only The Now is released on October 16 (Castaway Northwest Recordings). Tom Robinson appears at the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh (November 6); Oran Mor, Glasgow (November 7); and The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen (November 8)