HE may be playing packed out concerts across the world, but Frank Turner still found time to play a charity gig for his mum.

"My mum is in East Meon and she does fundraisers for the local school," says the Winchester rock star, reflecting on his busy summer.

"She's been asking me to do it for years and years, and when I got the backs of my hands tattooed - and my mum hates tattoos - either I had to do the gig for her or I had to wear gloves every time I come back to her house."

He did the gig - and doing so meant he had to drive down from playing to tens of thousands at Glastonbury to return to his home village. Around 3,000 people were there, but he tied it in with a sweaty solo performance at Winchester's Railway Inn. Playing to barely 100 people back home has become a regular feature of his tours despite their rapid expansion into bigger venues and new countries.

"I do smaller places from time to time," he says. "It's nice to give people something special, rather than just do big gigs with barriers and security and everything."

However, he speaks of his "responsibility as an entertainer" to play to as many people as possible.

"If all I did was just secret pop-up shows then the majority of people who are into me wouldn't be able to see me play."

And so he is returning to the big league with two sold-out nights at Southampton Guildhall to promote his sixth album, Positive Songs for Negative People. He's no stranger to the Guildhall, having played there on most of his previous tours since hitting the big time, but combined ticket sales of close to 3,500 make this his biggest headline show in Hampshire.

"I have memories of standing in the hall, looking at the stage and thinking 'maybe one day'," he says of the venue he visited as a teenager and has now comprehensively conquered.