“Listen, listen, listen, listen…”

When I first started listening to the Television Personalities, thoughts of what they might conjure live never crossed my mind – not so much through a lack of curiosity, but more because they seemed to fit so well in my bedroom I wouldn’t dream of moving them on. (And yes I am talking literally. That prison boat thing? Nah - s’all a big ruse, trust. More tea, Dan?...) After 30 years of setting diary entries to music, they’re still somehow off-radar to the classicist canonisers spilling ink for the likes of Q; the blinking red dot of the good ship TVP only briefly detected in the references of bands like The Futureheads, with their ‘Picture Of Dorian Gray’, (a song that sits comfortably alongside a whole raft of other rough diamonds on 1980’s ‘And Don’t The Kids Just Love It’). But that lack of appreciation, combined with the almost masochistically frank commentaries and confessionals of anxious cockney frontman Dan Treacy is the sort of thing that sticks hooks in people; laying anchor deep and drawing them in. With them it’s delicate, no matter how much the voices that sneered at the ‘Part Time Punks’ and Dorian Grays of this world might protest otherwise - so, however intriguing, tonight always held the potential for what happened next.

The Barfly is rammed by the time Treacy and his cohorts take to the stage, and this answers the questions I’d had about the nature of the audience. Towering ahead looms the cartoon cowboy, complete with Stetson, and in my right-ear drum a slick-quiff Yank fires friendly dock-side blanks in his bona fide New Yoik twang – Iggy is "fucken A" but with The Stooges, it’s "Soopoib". Judging by the two band's respective welcomes, a quick look at the relative clap-o-meter readings for Dustins Bar Mitzvah and the Television Personalities suggests that the youngers singing along to Dustins are aware of the headline act. By the premature end of TVP’s set those readings are skewed considerably, but their understudies - despite hear’say to the contrary - do put on an entertaining show.

Musically they mix dead-ahead chord-pumelling, (‘To The Ramones’…), with dead-ahead chord pummelling, (‘BNP’), but it is when they slow down to mix in a bit of stop-start Oi-funk (think the verses of ‘Moving to LA’) and then go into dead-ahead chord-pumelling that they really impress, (‘Catholic Boys’). Also, where the night’s first band Dirty Little Faces' singer came across as market-stall seller wrapped up in knock-down, rock star leathers, Dustins' has a bit more to him - one third Gaz Coombes in the ‘Alright’ days, the rest Cocksparrer’s Colin McFaull. Cheeky and loud, with a drummer who’s rather decent actually, the band play through rowdy crowd-members and frontman Dave’s broken guitar, which snaps at the neck half-way through the set. Earlier, Dirty Little Faces essentially threw together elements of The Paddingtons and the Rifles – and the combined powers of both these bands still couldn’t turn them into The Jam. Their standard oikish fare is bad only in the way that a well-grilled wedding band are bad and like I wouldn’t want to settle for being in a band like DLF I don’t want to get married yet.

Back to the main attraction then, and before I go into it, it’s probably a good idea to try and give some kind of context as to the events of the last few years. As you can see, things have been far from easy for Daniel Treacy.

The band gear up, and as they stumble from sound check into first song ‘This Angry Silence’, it’s noticeable that Ed Ball’s bobbing bass intro is turning over fewer cylinders than usual. The following ragged procession is one which sees the band dropping nervous glances at its leader, as he struggles with everything – words, mic, guitar, equilibrium – in the shadows, stage left. The fresh-faces of the coy looking cellist and singer Victoria Yeulet are bashful and slightly nervous to say the least, as Dan starts chug-chugging through ‘She Can Stop Traffic’ while the others play the intro to ‘My Dark Places’ and, after roughly four songs, Treacy drops suddenly to the ground like a shy child overcome with attention, shouting about how he’d rather be back in his cell than on the Barfly stage tonight. Ed Ball, who throughout the show seemed to be present more in the capacity of a chipper mental health worker than a bass player, helps to pick up Dan and lead him over to the side of the stage where he sits with his head in his hands.

The drums, voice and guitars of Dustins Bar Mitzvah return to the stage to race through a haphazard version of ‘Part-Time Punks’, staring all the while at the abject figure that sits in the corner with Dustins’ broken guitar. Feelings of despair and pity are inevitable now, as the whole room looks to a man with no answers for a sign that he might be able to rejoin us all for this party. But then it’s not a party – whether it’s something that happened earlier that day, or the events of the past few years and his own musical incompetence that break Treacy tonight, he is still showing us everything, still utterly sincere. There is no front, no striking poses of professionalism, just a man showing a crowd of people how he feels, really and truly, at that particular moment in time. As the house lights come up on the whole thing and we are herded out the door, it was with a feeling in my gut that I later decided would be like watching my dad getting a shoeing in the carpark at closing time.