Thing is, said righteous behemoth of a tune has, while been all over the music TV channels, not quite saturated the British market the way it has in the US (that’s all set to change when it goes Top 20 on Sunday). The band tailor their set accordingly. So, no one of their three albums dominates tonight, which ought to please fans old and new. There’s a bit of disappointment that we are not firing on all cylinders: frontman Chris is recovering from flu and looks like the last place he’d rather be now is thousands of miles away from home. But FoW are about the music, maaaaan, not playing it up as limelight-hogging rock slags. So that’s OK then.

This doesn’t matter a huge amount. The big, sparkly ‘I Got A Flair’ opens, and there are happy faces all around. “This is our favourite place to play” they say (shucks, I bet they say that to all the cities), and “aiiiiiiieeeee!!” or something is the reply. Adam rocks far more than a bassist really should, Jody throws some Guitar Star shapes, while Chris reluctantly has to tell the man behind the lights to turn off the red ones (“I’m serious, f’real”), which had been shining down on him. He looks like he’s about to die any second. I worry a little. Thankfully, the semi-acoustic threesome of ‘Hackensack’, ‘Hey Julie’ (an unexpected live treat that was too) and ‘Valley Winter Song’ give him a bit of a breather, as does an odd five-minute break.

It’s been a long time since I experienced a planned ‘interval’ like this at a gig, but it does wonders. The volume gets cranked up, ‘Stacy’s Mom’ inevitably gets the biggest singalong going (and there had been a lot of that already), and the crowd’s energy level doesn’t deflate for a good while. The reasons? ‘Radiation Vibe’, ‘Leave The Biker’, ‘Mexican Wine’, ‘Sink To The Bottom’ – well-crafted pop gems, one and all, with either stupid, funny, or just plain confusing lyrics. The very Oasis-sounding ‘Go Hippie’ is a bit of an odd one to finish on, and leaves a few people disappointed. Two days later in front of a crowd who’d remained mostly static throughout, the same song will end their London gig and create a sea of crowd surfers. You crazy kids.

Anyway, it’s been a long day. I purchase a T-shirt blatantly too small for me and stumble straight across the road into Nice ‘n’ Sleazys, where more fans than you can shake a barrel of badgers at have the same plan – drink beer, talk shit, get pished. “I fell in love with them when ‘Troubled Times’ came out,” a fan with an identical T-shirt tells me. For one night, she is My New Best Friend, and despite a slightly shaky return to these shores, Fountains of Wayne are still My Bestest Most Favourite Band In The Wurrrrld. <3