The Nolans signing off with a final tour

Lead singer Bernie Nolan said the sisters will be bidding an emotional farewell to the West Midlands when they play Birmingham's National Indoor Arena for one last time.

"It will be very sad, I don't know how I will keep it together," she said. "It's very humbling the way all our fans have stayed loyal to us for more than 30 years."

"Somebody said to me it is the end of an era, but we have all been solo artists in our own right for some years now," said Bernie, the subject of many a teenager's crush in the early 1980s. The Birmingham date, on March 12, comes two days before the group's final performance on March 14, and Bernie says it will be a moving occasion.

"It is Coleen's birthday, so it will be a very special night," she said.

"We're so glad to be coming to Birmingham, we've had some of our best times there, we used to play in the King's Cabaret Club and there used to be an Odeon, they were always brilliant places to go," she says. Bernie originally left the group in 1995, a year after Coleen quit to have a baby, but the Nolans continued with varying line-ups for another 10 years.

Then in 2009, Bernie, Linda, Coleen and Maureen got back together for a 30th anniversary reunion tour, which promptly sold out.

"That was the best tour we ever did," said Bernie.

"The audiences were so up for it. As you get older, you take things for granted less than you do when you are younger.

"We were so overwhelmed by the love that the public still have for the Nolans we thought we would do it one last time."