The punks have not died away, they have just turned mainstream. Hammersmith Odeon was packed to capacity on Saturday night with an audience still endearingly sporting quaint costumes from ‘76, and enthusiastically cheering (booing and spitting having apparently died down) for one of the hardiest survivors of the genre. The Buzzcocks come from Manchester, were formed as long ago as the spring of ‘76 and played in the earliest punk celebrations along with the Sex Pistols. Their main attraction, singer Howard Devoto, then split to start Magazine, while the new line-up has suddenly become a commercially hot property with their relatively easy-on-the-ear variety of new wave – they currently have a single and album in the best sellers.

Their appeal is in the music for it is certainly not in the presentation. Admittedly I was stuck somewhere to the back of the circle at Hammersmith, but the four figures in the distance seemed to have the combined stage presence of a lukewarm rice pudding. Which is to say the band had no focal point and no obvious personality beyond being identikit punk though it was saved by some subtle and imaginative lighting in time with the music.

The songs and actual performance were somewhat more interesting. Pete Shelley has developed a style that is both accessible to the mass market and is still based on punk energy and enthusiasm. Unlike many punks he concentrates on love songs – which after all are the basis of most popular music of all periods – and provides enough recognisably catchy tunes. Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) almost had the audience singing along – which was never exactly the case with the Pistols.