"Believe me, nobody was more disappointed than I was in the 90s when, having spent 10 or 15 years fighting against rock ’n’ roll cliché and lead guitarists and drum solos and everything that was just more of the same, that so many bands turned around and said ‘synthesiser music is old-fashioned, we want to sound like The Beatles’.

"I think we’re living in a post- modern musical landscape now. There’s nowhere new to go.

"The only thing you can do is try to dismantle things and make recombinations, a sort of hybridisation."

OMD continue to experiment, however, and their sell-out concert with the RLPO follows the premiere of their audio-visual installation, Energy Suite.

Just Humphreys and McCluskey will be on stage – with the other band members Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes in the audience – to avoid "the band playing just like it’s the record and the orchestra gratuitously welded in and in a bit of an unholy marriage".

Instead, the full 75-piece orchestra will perform the Energy Suite followed by a mixture of OMD hits.

The band’s original two members, who were removed from recorder class at Meols Primary School by the age of 10, are "excited but nervous" about the concert.

"I have to admit that I think Paul and I are going to be some way outside of our comfort zone, but the thought of having a 75-piece orchestra with a big screen above their heads, playing away to the Energy Suite with these gigantic films of power stations and cooling towers – I just think that’s going to be quite a powerful moment."

OMD and the RLPO play the Philharmonic Hall on June 20.