It begins with a drone, like some hokey religious ceremony, or an approaching B52 raid, there’s high pitched screaming and two flashing towers of light, the intro music turns almost Celtic, like a headbanger’s Hogmanay, and then, in an explosion of colour, like a rainbow puking, The Darkness hit the stage.

Justin Hawkins, ahead of this three date Irish tour, goes to his local drapers and asks the man behind the counter to try and imagine that St. Patrick has returned from the beyond, but this time he has decided to bring sexy with him. “I have the very thing”, says our man. Hawkins is fucking resplendent in a one-piece bright green jump suit, cut to the navel, and Cuban heels. If that wasn’t enough - and why, in the name of Jesus, would that not be enough? – he’s also sporting a cape, of the same eye-burning hue. Not all heroes wear capes, of course, but thankfully, some still do. There are other members of the band, although it’s hard to tear the eye away from that car accident of an outfit. Frankie Poullain, French for “Chicken God” I believe, sports a raspberry zoot suit behind his explorer bass, Rufus Tiger Taylor is in a Hawaiian shirt, and Dan Hawkins wears his trusty Thin Lizzy t-shirt beneath a shiny baseball jacket. It’s an awe inspiring visual feast, and they haven’t played a note yet.

‘Open Fire’ is the natural place to start, and after only twenty seconds in, we few, we happy few in a packed Academy have already attained rock nirvana. ‘Love Is Only A Feeling’ bathes us all in a mirror ball glow as our hands sway in time, followed by the righteous anger of ‘Southern Trains’, and then the chilling tale of an evil from olden times, 'Black Shuck’. Hawkins has now gone full Catweazle on acid as the band careen wildly into ‘Buccaneers Of Hispaniola’. The crowd break into the Olé chorus and this skilled band of troubadours pick up the ball and run with it, playing along. Poullain then brandishes a cow bell bigger than your head off which he breaks a drum stick before hammering out the intro to ‘One Way Ticket’, a cautionary drug tale which is followed by another, in ‘Giving Up’.