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Pop star Nik Kershaw has described how he spent hours "staring at the wall" with writer's block, as he releases his first new music for eight years.

The 1980s heartthrob, who lives in Suffolk, told BBC Radio Suffolk his songs came in "fits and starts".

Kershaw, known for hits such as Wide Boy and Don Quixote, has released a six-track EP called These Little Things.

He admitted that he had experienced "barren years".

"I had couple of years when I'd just go into a studio and stare at the wall for eight hours and come home again," he said.

Kershaw, who wrote The One and Only for Chesney Hawkes, said at other times he "went through a phase of just sitting down with an acoustic guitar and writing a song a day, whether it was rubbish or not".

"I'd write it, complete it and forget about it. I did this for two months.

"Later I came back to those songs and a good five or six of them made it on the album," he said.

The EP is a taster of a full 16-track studio album, Oxymoron, which is expected to come out later in the year.

'A major production'

The singer, who went to school in Ipswich, said he did not feel under pressure to produce new songs.

"I am aware people are interested in hearing them, which is great, but it would not have taken me eight years if I thought I was under that much pressure.

"I'm enjoying life outside music. I enjoy pottering around in the garden, walking the dogs.

"I wasn't focused on finishing an album until I started talking to a friend Andrew Sunnucks who has a company called Audio Networks and they said they'd release it. So they drove the process," he said.

"It did turn into a major production. My biggest problem is working out when a song is finished."

"There's always someone who says 'how about adding some strings', and then someone will say 'how about some horns'. It becomes this huge thing."

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