The Peel, Kingston

Ok, so the first thing to admit is that until Saturday nights gig I was a Twelfth Night virgin. I missed them in their Geoff Mann prime, only getting into the band when the XII album came out. I got that on cassette, which had this ludicrous 6 part fold out insert. But for some reason never saw the band.

Anyway, as it had been my birthday the day before, I popped in to see my brother on the off chance that he had something for me, and he did in the form of a new Sat-Nav system. I put this to good use straight away and managed to get to Fran Tuckett's place in under 10 minutes. That is less impressive when you know that I can spit into her garden from my brothers window.

Anyroad, using the little technological marvel, we managed to get to The Peel in record time. Storming in, we found that Twelfth Night had started without us, bloody cheek! Luckily, for them, they were still on the first song, The Ceiling Speaks. The place was heaving so we were stuck at the back. Which is close to the bar so I wasn't complaining! Neither was Matt Ellis, who looked like he'd been there for several hours already, but still wished me a Happy Birthday, as did Sarah 'Miss Kitty'. I also bumped into Croydon Mick and Tina.

The set was broked up into 2 sets, with the first one containing classics such as Blue Powder Monkey, Blondon Fair and First New Day, which saw Andy Sears go solo on the piano.

Highlight of this part was the magnificent Sequences. Many of you will know that this is one of my favourite songs and I must have been a bit overcome when they started playing it. Luckily Matt noticed my predicament and quickly thumped me, bringing of back down to earth in time to enjoy the song, which features a blistering guitar solo from Andy Revell.

There was a short break during which time we spotted Paddy down by the front of the stage. So armed with alcohol we elbowed our way to the front, like grans at a car boot sale. Once there we said our hello's to Paddy, Heike, Sam, Jane and Peter the other German.

Then the band reemerged and announced that they were going to perform the entire Fact & Fiction album. At this point Andy Sears came back onstage in suit and bowler hat - though he'd forgotten his shirt. He also had a young lad, Saul, with him who sung the opening lines to We Are Sane and then left the stage to rapturous applause.

Clive "ex-bomb" Mittens was excellent on the bass's and was perfect on the spoken sections. As were the crowd.

They carried on through Human Being, This City, World Without End, Fact & Fiction, Poet Sniffs A Flower, right up to the magnificent Creepshow.

And that was it.

No, of course it wasn't!

Brian Devoil led his troops back onstage, and Clive stepped up to the mic and said "I'm going to say two words to you, and if you don't reply with the correct answer, we're outta here!". What would he say? Would he cuss like a docker? Luckily he said the immortal words "Apple Pie". Thank fuck for that, we could all shout out "Lovely" and we did. However instead of the whole 19 minute coffin shaking, voice breaking, back raking and indeed pie baking extravaganza, we just got the bass solo as a teaser. Oh well, maybe next time!

This flowed into Art & Illusion, which featured another costume change for Mr Sears who donned a full head bandage which he threw to a lucky punter in the crowd, before they left the stage again.

But this time we knew that there'd be more, as we'd seen the set-list.

And sure enough before long the guys ambled back out on stage to do an emotional Love Song, that had 99% of the crowd singing along. The other percent should be forced to hang their heads in shame.

After the show, unlike a lot of other London venues, the band and crowd were free to hang around and chat, and we took full advantage of this by hanging around and chatting. I had a word with Andy Sears, who confirmed that we had met in cyberspace back in 2001, though he couldn't actually remember me.

I also picked up a copy of the excellent Fact & Fiction album, before we scuttled off into the night