Badly Drawn Boy

Awww he’s so shweeeeeet! Badly Drawn Boy AKA tea cosy dosser impersonator AKA Damon Gough is lying on the stage, doing press ups. He has previously snogged and then punched a glove puppet, and he will later walk around asking the front row their names to put in a song…only to be confronted with difficult ones he can’t scan into lines.

He does all of this whilst pronouncing at every single opportunity in incredulous humble amazement: “Did I really win the Mercury music prize!? / If I can make it then anybody else can”, this is followed closely by “You’re such a wonderful audience” and third in the In-Between-Song-Banter Olympics is “I’m gonna be a dad in a month and my girlfriend Claire is great!!!!” All together now: AAAAAAAHHHH!

However sweet and cute and sentimental this all is it does start to grate a bit after two hours. You almost think that some Disney birdies and bunny rabbits are going to appear from the sides of the stage to frolic around Damon and Co. as they play their instruments.

The songs are strung out a little bit more than on the album, and musical accuracy is perhaps sacrificed a bit to showmanship. The euphoric Badly Drawn Boy obviously doesn’t believe that music on its own can entertain an audience. His set is helped by the up for it crowd, then again the whole show seems to depend upon that. God knows what would happen it he had a “crap” audience.