Wednesday, September 20

After a series of unbelievably complicated arrangements, I find myself in a restaurant called Cote, in Wardour Street, eating dinner with Mark and Eileen.

As we eat the rain turns from drizzle to a fully formed monsoon. Our meal completed we walk through the driving rain to the London Palladium where Dexys will perform their new album. Their performance will take place in two acts. Hmmm, we will think.

They will do what they set out to do extremely well. Kevin Rowland is still fit and still in very good voice. When he does an unexpected but perfectly in-tune falsetto section the whole theatre erupts.

The Palladium has almost no empty seats. The audience love him. The new album gets rapturous applause. He seems genuinely moved by this.