A Manchester band reunited are also back at the top of their game, and proved it with a belter of a set at the Academy on Monday night.

It's almost a year since James last played the venue on their reunion tour after six years away, and this time round, with a slightly rejigged line-up, they were every bit as good.

The fact they have a new album out, Hey Ma, rather than just another compilation, as was the case then, made for a slightly less adventurous set than last time.

It was pretty much a straightforward case of new stuff interspersed with greatest hits to keep the sell-out crowd happy.

Things weren't quite as unambitious as that sounds, however.

For one thing, they included no fewer than nine of the new album's 11 tracks in their two-hour set, and for another, they didn't bother doing their biggest hit, Sit Down, a No 2 back in 1991.

Neither decision backfired, though, as Hey Ma marks a cracking return to form after 2001's indifferent Pleased To Meet You, and their back catalogue is more than strong enough to make up for the omission of any one song.

They could probably even have got away with going a bit further and dropping Come Home and Johnny Yen too, both of which must have been trotted out thousands of times over the years.

Singer Tim Booth's voice remains as strong and clear as ever, and his dancing – on a nearby bar as well as the stage – was, if anything, even more eccentric than it used to be.

The 48-year-old also appears to have come to terms with his baldness.
There was no mucking around with hats, as was the case at the start of last year's show, and he was relaxed enough to sing a line, in new single Whiteboy, likening himself to Yul Brynner.

Ben Kingsley would be closer to the mark, or even Victor Zsasz, a baddie in the 2005 film Batman Begins and its forthcoming sequel, The Dark Knight, largely, in the latter case, because it was him.

He was anything but the villain of the piece on Monday night, though, as his band's latest lease of life continues to come up trumps.