Tits out fo' the' lads!

Is Justin Hawkins Sid the Sexist from Viz magazine made flesh? After all, there could be many that argue arriving at the Odyssey hoisted into the air atop a massive set of mammaries would be enough cause to walk out in disgust and have feminist MPs and writers ranting on.

But, the point is, it was funny.

I know, humour at the expense of others isn't considered politicall correct, and is...well you know the rants. Problem is, Justin takes the piss out of himself as much as others.

He knows he's no oil painting; and instead of trying to hide his defects he even parades them; joking with the crowd about his newly acquired beer belly, and then showing it off - to which some people at the front replied with joking chants of "You fat bastard, you fat bastard..." and "Who ate all the pies, who ate all the pies..."

On Sunday night The Darkness proved a few doubters wrong (well they would have had they bothered to turn up!). The band showed they are all good musicians. They still write huge pop songs, they have a front man in Hawkins who can not only engage the crowd, but actually seems to be enjoying it; and they have used three years of touring to craft a set list that was almost perfectly balanced.

Yeah, we all know the formula - fast opening, few crowd pleasers, a few fast ones, then slow it all down to give everyone a break before ripping it up again - followed by an encore of course. The off to bed or post-show party.

But The Darkness add a few wrinkles that keeps it fresh (not just the stage set). It was audacious to show the cod-arrival in a helicopter of the band on the big screens; even knowing that everyone in the crowd knew there was no grass around the Odyssey which such a chopper could land on (sorry, Hawkins-style pun there...). It was downright over-the-top to tease the crowd with a segue of the band's videos before coming on stage and it was clearly not playing a part in the hard rock rule book (class 1.23) to encore with a song that isn't a single (Not for Me). But hey, ultimately it all worked.

We got all the hits, the entire One Way Ticket to Hell album, we got a goodly selection of from Permission to Land. We got a pit going down the front and we all had a good time.