Madness, The O2 - music review

"Lovely, fresh-faced young Londoners, eh?" said Graham "Suggs" McPherson as he surveyed his audience at this tour finale. He was joking, of course, as this jolly gathering of ageing fans wearing red fezzes has been following the ska-pop band from Camden for 35 years.

"This is not the One Direction perfume launch," Suggs added for clarification, though Madness were once as big as any boy band. Still popular enough to play arena tours, in recent years they have performed at Buckingham Palace, the Olympics closing ceremony and BBC Television Centre’s farewell concert.

In middle age, the nutty boys are in danger of becoming respectable, so it was reassuring to witness the antic presence of saxophonist Lee Thompson. He played the honking Night Boat to Cairo while dressed in a boiler suit and goggles that suggested he was planning an evening of pest control.

With his equally eccentric humour, Suggs was the master of ceremonies and sang with his familiar giddy delivery on Embarrassment, My Girl and Wings of a Dove.

However, there was not much sign of Madness as a contemporary creative force; new song The Last Rag and Bone Man was an off-kilter tune that could have been written in 1981.

As a live unit, though, Madness sounded sharp without losing the youthful exuberance of wobbly, brass-heavy anthems House of Fun, Baggy Trousers and Our House.

They wrapped up this Christmas party with a return to their ska roots that had middle-aged men dancing like teenagers. Madness and the fans still have their nutty moments.