Although the Divine Comedy were the headliners and Ben Folds the support it was virtually the other way round at this superb gig with loads of Folds' ex-pat fans packing into this most intimate of venues. Ben played for almost an hour and it was obvious from his standing up and musical bashing of the piano to the stomping opener One Angry Dwarf & 200 Solemn Faces that this wasn't going to be a solemn, introverted singer songwriter set. Folds' piano playing was superb throughout. An extrovert performer, he also conducted the audience to sing the studio harmonies and counter melodies to his songs and amazingly, our singing was really tuneful and effective, embellishing the solo piano songs at this acoustically excellent venue.

The evening was very much a collaboration between the 2 main artists with Neil Hannon coming on stage to play guitar to one song towards the end of Ben's set which was one of the best and most entertaining supporting sets I have ever seen and worth the price of admission alone. Highlights included a very different minor key version of his not-totally-politically-correct-but hilarious-anyway Song For The Dumped and the audience's backing singing which created a great feel-good atmosphere..

The new scaled down 4-piece Divine Comedy consists of Neil Hannon on vocals, piano and more occasional acoustic guitar, an electric guitarist, double bassist (electric bass would have cut through the sound better) plus a drum / percussion / xylophone playing multi instrumentalist. They began with a not-as-rollicking-as on-record-but-still-very-good National Express which curtailed suddenly after the guitar solo rather than having the usual extended outro. The new more intimate line-up brought the quality of the songs out more rather than over-simplifying their complex subtleties except for Becoming More Like Alfie which sorely missed the answering trumpet / keyboard to the vocals lines even though the guitar solo at the end was superb as usual. Neil played songs from throughout the Divine Comedy's career including 3 very promising new songs - Happy Goth, as premiered recently on Jonathan Ross Radio 2 show was excellent and Idaho fine despite Neil apologising about it throughout the song. Presumably he found the rather clichéd lyric about being away from home and missing his wife too clichéd in comparison to his usual lyrical originality but he shouldn't worry as the song was fine. It was slightly unfortunate though that some of Ben Folds' fans were talking during the Divine Comedy's set as they were missing out on some great music as well as being rude. Although Folds is the greater live entertainer I would much rather listen to the more introverted Hannon's subtle and clever songs at home. Ben came on towards the end of Divine Comedy's main set to play drums on one song and - guess what - he is also an excellent drummer as well as a fantastic pianist.

After closing the main Divine Comedy set with an excellent and appropriate Tonight We Fly, Neil and Ben came back for 4 superb collaborative encores which illustrated their massive talents. First up was a superb Your Daddys Car with Ben on vocals and Neil playing some excellent piano. They swapped roles for the following Songs Of Love which is better known by most people as the Father Ted theme song. After this the 3 other members of Divine Comedy returned to the stage to play along to Ben Folds' best song, Brick, a beautiful ballad with Ben on piano and Neil on vocals. To finish this excellent gig, we were treated to an excellent, ensemble version of Flaming Lips' Race For The Prize which also featured on the Ross show a couple of weeks ago. A neat finish to an excellent gig, one of the best and most intimate live music evenings I've been to for a long time.