A lot of people don’t like The Darkness. They are the definitive Marmite band of the last decade – but why? Is it the window-smashing vocals? The so-tight-they’re-almost-see-through catsuits? That song about something called love? Who knows.

What we do know, however, is that the couple of thousand doe-eyed disciples here tonight in Glasgow do love the hairy buggers. The original quartet are back up north for the first time in years, and there’s an odd festival vibe pervading the air tonight. There are the giddy young whippersnappers with their mobile phones, the drunken lads spilling beer and there are the true fans too, nostalgia coursing through their bloodstreams.

This band don’t take themselves seriously – one reason why the po-faced dissenters are ill-judged – and when Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back In Town’ ironically trots through the PA, smiles are raised. But those smiles soon evolve into pogo jumps and fist shakes as the band open with the double whammy of ‘Black Shuck’ and ‘Growing On Me’ – a rumoured lamentation of STIs – with both exuding keen classic rock groove.

Indeed, there’s so much right about tonight. There’s Justin Hawkins’ piggybacked guitar solo through the crowd and there’s pyrotechnics that aren’t really needed, but still seem wholly necessary. There’s Scottish bass player Frankie Poullain, who somehow manages to look absolutely ridiculous yet cucumber cool at the same time, and there’s also the oddly impressive cover of Radiohead’s ‘Street Spirit’ too.

But there’s one song everyone wants to hear tonight, the pop-rock chart monster, ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’. And the band know it too, teasing and toying with its opening chord, and however cheesy the handclap breakdown may be, it looks like The Darkness have never quite been so happy. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, then.

Chris Cope