Gig review: Madness and Squeeze at First Direct Arena, Leeds

Special guests Squeeze, led as ever by Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford provided an excellent selection of hits and choice numbers from their repertoire, climaxing with Cool For Cats and an encore od Black Coffee In Bed during which each member of the band performed short solos.

But the main event were those Nutty Boys from Camden Town – Madness.

Amazingly, six of the seven band members of the ‘classic’ line-up are still strutting their nutty stuff: vocalist Suggs (Graham McPherson), Mike ‘Barso’ Barson on keyboards, Lee Thompson on sax, guitarist Chris Foreman, bassist Mark ‘Bedders’ Bedford and drummer Dan Woodgate. The sextet were accompanied by an extra percussionist and a three-piece brass section.

With a London-themed stage set (looking remarkably like Downing Street), the band was greeted by an eruption of cheers from the massed ranks of fans, with many wearing pork-pie hats and fezzes.

We knew what to expect right at the beginning, when Suggs entered the on-stage phone box and ‘rang’ his mum, telling hr that for the first time in two years, they were working, but were gonna have a party! Cue rabid crowd and Suggs shouting “One Step Beyond!!!”

Hit after hit followed in quick succession: Embarrassment, The Prince, My Girl, Wings Of a Dove, to name but four as well as other songs like Baby Burglar and Mr Apples, a jaunty number from the band’s last album.

And it wasn’t just the audience that was having fun; the band too were having a good time. There were images in the windows of the backdrop houses, an excerpt from Singing In The Rain (during The Sun And The Rain), and during Shut Up we had bits of the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (after which the tour has been named). Also, there were a few digs at Boris Johnson.

Madness’s 90-minute set was all too brief and culminated in a quartet of massive hits: House Of Fun, Baggy Trousers (and no, sax player Lee Thompson did NOT take to the air), Our House and It Must Be Love.

For the encore, the band returned to the stage through the telephone box and performed their anthemic Madness and Night Boat To Cairo. The sea of people in front of the stage were totally letting themselves go in a frenzy of dancing and joining in all the songs and were visibly deflated as the show ended. But we all went away happy having been to a ‘nutty’ party.