Sunday: Hill Walking on Arran. Monday: oo! mi knees a bit sore. Tuesday: ah, my knees getting sorer. Wednesday: Knee proper swollen, cant bend mi leg, Charlatans at the O2 in Glasgow. Can’t miss it tho’, I fuckin’ love the Charlatans me, gonna pop a few pills (ibruprofen & paracetomol) & off I go.

A ferry, a train, & an agonising walk later I’m sat in the upper echelons of the O2 witnessing the Charlatans deliver a set of classics to the videoized backdrop of 32 years of performances & posters. It was brilliant, the dance floor was packed & throbbing. “I’ve driven all the way from Liverpool,’ said a lady punter at the bar within my earshot, “but it was well worth it.” Yeah, distance & knee pain are nothing when it comes to seeing the Charlatans in their pomp.

Songs from every era enter’d our ears via cheeky, cardigan-clad cherubim Tim Burgess & his boys; for me Different Days, North Country Boy, How High, One To Another & the sexy stomper You’re So Pretty were all highlights. They also played a heavier version of Sleepy Little Sunshine Boy, a sneaky favorite of mine from 1999.

Gazing round at the crowd, it was all smiles & singalongs & up in the stalls stand-up-athons, with the more majestic numbers being met by roars of euphoria. Groovy as fuck like & long may the Charlatans, their journeyings & our personal paeans to their superbia continue !

Damian Beeson Bullen