"Justin: My cancer hell!" screams the cover of the UK's most sophisticated comic, The Daily Star. On the morning of their biggest headlining show to date, The Darkness have siezed the imagination of the press and public as few could have dreamt in their most unforgiving nightmares.
This is certainly a welcome turn of events for the fervent majority here this evening, some of whom are approaching the close of a 24-hour rock bender of rather rude, improbable proportions, following AC/DC's irresistible crowning a day earlier on this very stage.
From grown men dressed as schoolboys, then, we move onto grown men dressed as camp medieval superheroes. This evening Justin Hawkins, presumably in remission, is all flailing capes, garish headbands, flowing main and the kind of flagrant chest exposing you can forgive from a man clearly just too damn alive to consider donning a shirt.
Of course, it's all very entertaining, thankfully. Indeed, the notion that the band are anywhere near a serious proposition is perhaps the most alarming element of the schtick surrounding The Darkness. As much people-friendly, axe-kissing Queen-pomp as cliché-swamped Spinal Tap homage, The Darkness are - almost - beyond a joke.
Wherein lies the rub. Tonight, this pre-historic beast is led down the centre of a flame-kissed moat of comic set-pieces, by a band bathing in the overblown lunacy of rock's most ludicrous waters. So, naturally, Justin cries: "Give me a D! Give me an Arkness!" He rides through the crowd atop a roadie's shoulders to deliver a fork-lightning guitar solo. He disappears and returns resplendent in a red and white jumpsuit and streaks across the back of the stage, his cape flapping behind him.
Significantly, lest it be forgotten, The Darkness have tunes. My, do they have tunes. The kind of power rock that straddles the point where axe bombast and stage tomfoolery collide like a fizzing firework in the side of Joey Tempest's waterfall mop. 'I Believe In A Thing Called Love', 'Love On The Rocks With No Ice', 'Love Is Only A Feeling', 'Get Your Hands Off My Woman' and 'Growing On Me' are all potential chart-slayers, with the word Slayer being yet another pun.
However, it's the cover of, as Justin puts it, "The Radioheads'" 'Street Spirit' that's particularly disarming, his glass-breaking falsetto dead-panning Thom Yorke's executed angst into a theatrical turn of such fabulous proportions that lines like "I can feel death, can see its beady eyes" suddenly seem strangely comforting.
The Darkness are certainly the antidote to the claustrophobic seriousness and crippling artistic heavy of the likes of Radiohead. Judging by the maelstrom of excitement surrounding the band, it's clearly a winning formula, if one that is unlikely to sustain a career as unstoppable as AC/DC's, or, say, Bad News. Meanwhile, for the bemused, dumbfounded few, well, we've given up giving a f*ck, as Justin Hawkins might shriek.
