Dressed every inch as the office junior in untucked short-sleeved shirt and tie, he looks in ruder health than anyone his age really ought to. The blonde hair has gone, to be replaced by a dark brown thatch and terrific beard, but the saccharine-sweet croon remains as we open with Snow In Sun from the Mercury-nominated White Bread Black Beer. If the tour is promoting the new album, it’s doing an excellent job. The Boom Boom Bap sounds spine-tingling in the live arena, Dr Abernathy is as jaunty as anything you’ll ever hear and only the third use (apparently) of the E Eleventh chord in the song of the same name is brilliant. But because stage shows have been off the agenda for pretty much all of Scritti Politti’s lifetime, there’s a wealth of back catalogue to cherry-pick from too. The Sweetest Girl successfully erases lingering memories of Madness’s cover and the joy on audience members’ faces as The Word Girl’s cod-reggae tumbles from the speakers is distinctly noticeable. The Marxists and Gramsci-ites dotted about the place with their berets in their pockets are sated by a sticker on Green’s guitar that simply reads ‘Philosophy’ but his current obsession seems to be hip-hop. Self-dismissing to the last, he maintains that his rhymes are terrible and that the real talent lies with the mind-boggling rappers he produced the beats for, but his cover versions belie his lack of confidence. Die Alone, from his 1999 voyage into hip-hop Anomie and Bonhomie, sounds wonderful even without Me'shell Ndegeocello. A rushed encore, because “three of the band need to go to the toilet”, ends with the song that Green wrote when the stage beckoned once more but under a pseudonym. The Traitorous Three was its name, in homage to his new backing band, featuring his beautiful wife Alys, and it’s a stomping way to end a superb show. Just don’t leave it so long until next time, eh? | 
