There’s a palpable sense of disbelief and excitement as the headliners step out under rose-coloured lights. Bedecked in salmon tuxedo, hair slicked back, singer Mike Patton surveys an ecstatic crowd with melodica in hand as the tones of ‘Midnight Cowboy’ float out. Next, the band plunge into action with ‘The Real Thing’ and one of the gigs of the year is underway.

Sticking mostly to Angel Dust material for the first half of the set, FNM soon have the crowd baying every single lyric aloud while Patton sings through a megaphone.
The highlight comes when the group break off halfway through ‘Midlife Crisis’, the crowd belting out the chorus note perfectly. Then the Americans slide into the Eastenders theme, perplexing everyone in the way only FNM can do (why not Fair City? – Soap Opera Editor).
Patton and keyboardist Roddy Bottom are full of acidic banter, claiming the Olympia’s Victorian interior looks like “MC Hammer’s living room”. Nonetheless, they seem genuinely humbled by the crowd’s enthusiasm.
The singer even decides to punctuate the crooning of ‘Easy’ with a headlong stage dive into the crowd, who don’t give him back without a fight. There are a few real curveballs thrown in, with ‘RV’, in particular, eliciting a stunned silence from a room that otherwise would not shut up all night.
An encore is demanded, and delivered in the chilled-out form of ‘Stripsearch’. They depart to rapturous shouts for more.