Christy still has a way with the hecklers. Disarming in a don't-f**k-with-me kind of way. One was given the middle finger, accompanied by a smile, the other similarly informed (though without the finger this time) that he could be accommodated later on. There was a weird vibe throughout the evening. Most of the audience only seemed to rouse themselves from their torpor on the singalongs, 'Delirium Tremens' and 'Don't Forget Your Shovel', despite Moore and his trusty companero, Declan Sinnott, putting in a memorable shift. I did wonder what the hirsutely-challenged, red-faced, big-bellied men and their neat little wives - a drunk's impression of the cast of The Archers - made of 'Biko Drum' and 'Victor Jara'. They didn't look as though they were in the mood for radical songs about anti-fascist activists subdued brutally by the former regimes in South Africa and Chile.

For the rest of us, there was much to embrace. A passionate 'Viva La Quinta Brigada', a sublime reading of Joni Mitchell's 'The Magdalene Laundries' and a heart-stopping 'Well Below The Valley' with a doff of the cap to John Reilly.

The new material from Listen worked well, especially Ian Prowse's 'Does This Train Stop On Merseyside?' And it was a real treat to hear Sinnott solo on 'I Will'.

David Burke