Gig review: Chesney Hawkes at Brudenell Social Club Community Room, Leeds

You know I’ve got a new album out, right?” Chesney Hawkes asks out loud, fiddling with the pegs of his headstock. A few cheers break through the agreeable murmur that hovers above the Brudenell Community Room, and he gives a good-natured snort in response. “Yeah, I’m as surprised as you are too.”

Fifteen minutes of fame can be a fickle thing to navigate on the way down. For a brief moment a quarter-century ago, the Windsor-born singer-songwriter was the hottest popstar on the planet, riding high thanks to sugary power-pop smash The One and Only. Then, nothing; a handful of minor-league cuts and a swift slide into chart decline, destined for perennial where-are-they-now pub-quiz pointscorer status.

That Hawkes has done more than simply survive the nineties and beyond speaks to his love of the game as much as his professional ethics. He might still be a one-hit wonder in the nominal sense – last year’s Living Arrows, his first record in over a decade, failed to score any dramatic commercial revival – but his clear delight in the technical craft and performative care that comes with music on-and-off-stage still shines through with such boyish endearment that it sweeps his audience along with him across 85 minutes to more than just cheesy effect.

Hair cropped to a shaggy quiff with salt-and-pepper stubble, he still knows which side his bread is buttered; among the merch-stall staples of branded tees and tote bags, he has played into his former pin-up status with tongue-in-cheek, selling saucy-seaside thongs.

There is too an air of DIY dorkiness; he and his band play before a haphazard tarpaulin that spins clips from Buddy’s Song, the film with Roger Daltrey that handed him his break, while covers of Nik Kershaw and The Killers add to the avuncular air of karaoke delights.

But beyond, Hawkes still has more hooks up his sleeve; I’m a Man Not a Boy still soars with a glossy polish, while Nothing Serious remains just as suitably burnished. Elsewhere, piano ballad LOUD! proves softly affecting, as does a cover of The Tremelos’ take on Silence is Golden, of which his father Chip was bassist and singer.

Eventually though, he cannot hold the inevitable. “Here’s that bloody song,” he says, any mock-frustration undercut by his grin. As The One and Only billows out into the night, it seems there’s still plenty left in the tank for him.