Before we discuss the brilliance of James Dean Bradfield’s triumphant London return, a word or two about the support band, or more pressingly, the attitude of the support band. Vega 4 sound like Snow Patrol. Noone with ears could deny this fact. They also have zero stage presence and seem to have nothing in common with the headliner aside from being labelmates. Now, being a Manics support IS a thankless task, you are in front of a hardcore audience who really don’t want you there. This can work in your favour, for example at last week’s Cardiff gig, Johnny Boy came out and just enjoyed themselves and played a blinder, by the time ‘You Are The Generation Who Bought More Shoes’ blasted out, they’d won over a large portion of the crowd. Brilliant. Vega 4 on the other hand were not only woefully out of their depth but made themselves out to be complete idiots. Basically what happened was this – obviously the band had plenty of friends and family near the front who were the only ones interested in the mind numbing muzak they were offering, from behind this small group came the not-untrue-or-particularly-nasty heckle “You’re Snow Patrol in disguise!”. Not a particularly harsh thing to say, but the singer decided to stop the show and get them to put the houselights up and those around pointed to who had shouted it. Fucking hell, you’re not Barbara Streisand, you’re not Elvis, you’re not even famous yet, get over yourselves. To make matters worse, a fight then broke out, with no doubt some over zealous relative wading in and taking a pop at the heckler leading to security coming in and grabbing the kid and hoisting him out, while the Vega 4 mafia applauded. This was followed by the band playing another song that sounded exactly like Snow Patrol. Wankers.

Once the Vega 4 crowd had gone home for cocoa and The Archers, it was almost time for the third solo London venture for Bradfield. Starting the set with an explosive ‘Émigré’, JDB is in fine form, it seems that he is much more confident in smaller venues even joking when the inevitable shouts for ‘Sleepflower’ arrive - “Fucking hell, already? That’s the record for someone shouting for that!”. He seems even more amused when a braver soul shouts for classic B-side ‘Patrick Bateman’ – “Those are some lyrics I’m never singing again…”

The set takes in most of The Great Western, the only two songs missing are the Brel cover ‘To See A Friend In Tears’, which wouldn’t really work anyway live and ‘Badboys And Painkillers’, the Wire/JDB effort that most echoes the work of Bradders’ official band. Speaking of which, they do not shy away from the work of Manic Street Preachers, far from it. Alongside Bradfield’s own ‘Ocean Spray’ (now with a highly unnecessary saxophone solo) we get ‘Kevin Carter’, ‘This Is Yesterday’, ‘From Despair To Where?’, ‘No Surface All Feeling’ and even an acoustic runthrough of ‘A Design For Life’. Don’t get the wrong idea though, the solo material more than holds its own against the classics and the band, despite only being together a short while, gel brilliantly.

As he leaves the stage, Bradfield proclaims he will be back ‘with Nick and Sean’ next year and that the eighth Manics album is gonna be ‘fucking brilliant’. If he continues on this form, you wouldn’t bet against them producing a furious classic to wash away the disappointment of 'Lifeblood'. See you next year, sir.