Almond ayes

When Soft Cell first appeared on Top of the Pops in summer 1981, miming along to their version of Gloria Jones’s ‘Tainted Love’, it felt like a moment of palpable newness. Well, it certainly did if you were prepubescent and really had no idea what sex actually was.

Romantic love — in either its glory or disappointment — was the everyday subject of the pop song, but here was this funny little fella in black, with studded accessories, singing of a love that was ‘tainted’. I had no idea what he got up to when the lights went out. I knew that homosexuality existed — in the same way that California condors existed, and Olympic athletes existed. But as a provincial 12-year-old, I had no idea that Marc Almond was gay, though I was absolutely certain he wasn’t the same as my parents, or my friends’ parents. Almond seemed less an imp of the perverse than of the downright perverted.

Thirty-seven years later, at their third final-ever gig — they have previously played final-ever gigs in 1984 and 2004 — the perversion was, understandably, less evident. Almond has long since graduated from the Sex Dwarf of his own song to national treasure, while keyboard player David Ball is now rotund and bespectacled. The Sunday night audience perhaps has less inclination to dream of dungeons when the working week begins the following morning. And it is hard to imagine a space less suitable for sleazy intimacy than the cavernous O2 Arena.

And what an odd show it was: overlong and under-rehearsed. At one point, Almond apologised for its shambolic nature, and he wasn’t being self-deprecating. Even though it was being beamed to cinemas around Europe and America, it was all a bit wing and a prayer.