The Pogues

THERE was a massive younger element who crammed into King Tut’s beside long-time Pogues fans to see their punk-folk idols.

Sad to say, there were many who decided they must be on their way ... away from their hero Shane McGowan’s stream of missed cues and mumbled lyrics.

En masse The Pogues were a mere shadow of their former selves, even the frenetic Spider Stacy putting in a lacklustre performance.

A ‘going through the motions’ mantle covered this set, which did admittedly get better with time, but McGowan’s “It’s nice to be back in ... (lengthy hesitation while his addled brain figures out where it’s nice to be) ... Scotland” summed up The Pogues a la 2008.

They even murdered the emotive ‘Dirty Old Town’ by making it ridiculously up-tempo. A sparkling Fiesta closed the set – but it was too late to recover the lost magic of these 1980s trailblazers.