It’s date night at the O2: thousands of long-established – by the look of things – couples are gearing up for a Saturday night with the man who could well have provided the playlist for their first kisses. As with half the shows on Craig David’s first arena tour in 15 years, this one is sold out, and, throughout, there’s a sense of release for both fans and David himself. As he advances from the back of the stage in a white tracksuit, a wave of emotion breaks: the crowd are on their feet, singing an album track with him, and David gazes back, a mixture of chastened Romeo and reinvigorated popster-about-town.

Having illustrated the maxim about pride coming before a fall, he’s a different person these days. His way back from the ignominy of collapsing sales and merciless mockery on the Noughties sketch show Bo’ Selecta! has been a one-step-at-a-time affair, helped along by a second career as a DJ under the moniker TS5; there’s humility now where once there was arrogance. Moistly emerging from the triple-whammy opener of Ain’t Giving Up, What’s Your Flava and Fill Me In – the latter two buoyant reminders that he helped to establish UK garage – he repeatedly says: “Thank you so much,” and seems to mean it. “One minute I was up here,” – he reaches over his head as his band revs up the 2002 single Rise & Fall – “and the next I was down here”, pointing to the floor. “But to be onstage at the O2 16 years later, performing this song … ”

If he still seems just slightly like a chap who might own a monogrammed bathrobe, that only puts him in step with the solipsistic times. Or perhaps the times have just caught up with him. The self-regarding playa lampooned on Bo’ Selecta! has become the blueprint for many current stars – have David and Drake ever been seen in the same room? – and tonight’s show sometimes feels like a homage to that playa. Clearly, he has evolved far beyond the stereotype, yet he’s thoroughly at home with the Teflon hollowness of tonight’s big cover version, Justin Bieber’s Love Yourself. Incidentally, it’s a measure of Bieber’s disturbing reach that every last person in the room knows the words; on the up side, a 20,000-strong choir gives the song far more resonance than when David sang it on the BBC 1Xtra Live Lounge last year.

David still sings beautifully (and writes engagingly, in a jumble of dance/EDM styles, as displayed on his chart-topping comeback album Following My Intuition). But he had promised to “turn this place into a rave”, and that was what happened in the second half. Returning with a set of decks imprinted with the TS5 logo, he cranked up hits by himself and others, and brought in London MC Big Narstie for a raucous double act on the recent single When the Bassline Drops. Partying like it’s 1999, with a dash of 2017: it’s nice to see him again.

• At Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham, on 28 March. Box office: 0843-373 3000. Then touring until 9 April.