OMD

Allow me to let younger readers into a secret. Actually some middle-aged folk like to have fun. We are not all miserable buggers whingeing about the price of petrol, asserting how things were better in our day and voting for UKIP. (Why does UKIP have to say its not a racist party? As Charlie Brooker put it, its like your new next door neighbour coming round and introducing himself as your new, non-dogging, neighbour. Or as I was discussing with my trainee what would happen if it turned out that a candidate from one of the other parties had once been a BNP member. It should be ok because they must have had a conversion to see the light. In UKIP they have to be banned as all they would have done is nudged themselves slightly along the political line to a party that will get more votes.)

But no, we aren't all miserable buggers like that. And a surreptitious bunch of us happy mid-lifers sneaked out to the Roundhouse on Friday night to watch the middle-aged Andy McCluskey bounce around like a lunatic in front of us, as we bounced around on the floor. Ok, thinner hair and thicker waistlines now, but we were basically back the way we were when we were teenagers/students, having a laugh and enjoying good music in a good-natured manner. At a fairly trendy venue - the old engine-turning yard now general purpose venue - the Roundhouse. Now to be fair it has been trendier. It once was one of the home of punk, but now it has had a serious makeover and it is a pretty middle class form of trendy. But a fun place to be (unless you all try to exit at once. At the end there is a long stretch of waddling like penguins to the exit).

First things first, the support was John Foxx, also a throwback to the Eighties. He was lead singer of Ultravox before Midge Ure came in and the band hit it big. I am afraid to say this wasn't my cup of tea. There was this particular thread of electronic music which was slow and dirge like and I am afraid left me cold, although it had its admirers in the crowd, including my companion.

But OMD are a different kettle of fish altogether. They played a number of tunes from their new album, but as McCluskey said at the outset, "There will be some new ones...., and some old ones." There were certainly enough of the old ones to satisfy the crowd. And Ian McCluskey's "Dad at a wedding" style of dancing is something to behold. Not a man who takes himself too seriously, he lets go with gay abandon and a lack of self-restraint that is positively life-affirming, and quite how he manages to do it without having a coronary I do not know. He positively glistened with sweat from the very first number.

We old-timers (and I guess there was but a handful of youngsters there) lapped it up. Indeed its a pity there weren't a few teenagers there just to watch what old folk can be like when not lecturing about homework.

All the old hits were there, Enola Gay, Locomotion, Joan of Arc, Messages. They finished up with Electricity, or as Andy put it, "we will finish with what we started with as 16 year-olds." A great song and if you listen to it you can pick up the missing link between New Wave of the Seventies and Electronica of the Eighties.

Great night.