For the music fan, the Queen's Golden Jubilee has offered a variety of dismal sights and sounds: Brian May playing the National Anthem, the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson performing with Emma Bunton, Ben Elton's punchable face singing along to All You Need is Love.

No sight, however, has been quite as depressing as that of John Lydon dragging himself around the nation's chat shows, drumming up publicity for the Sex Pistols' "final" reunion concert. He cuts a strangely pathetic figure, a 47-year-old trapped in perpetual sneering adolescence, unable to grow up because he has nothing new to offer. Launching feeble salvos against soft targets (David Beckham and Graham Norton), stuffed into a variety of idiotic outfits, Lydon is apparently unaware that he now resembles a dreadful pantomime figure, one of Harry Enfield's Old Gits played by Danny La Rue. Terrifying, threatening Johnny Rotten has long left the building, taking his dignity with him.

The British public Lydon characterises as stupid are clearly smart enough to see through him: the hideous venue is barely half full. The anti-climax is heightened when the Sex Pistols appear. In contrast to their 1996 reformation, the band sound terrible. Lumbering and turgid, they cover Hawkwind's Silver Machine and The Who's Substitute. Their obvious lack of rehearsal adds no edge, no unpredictability. They sound like tired old men playing their weekly gig in the local pub. Lydon encourages the crowd to sing along, as menacing as a puppet made from a sock.

Fitfully, something gels: Pretty Vacant rampages along, Belsen Was A Gas's queasy humour is momentarily startling, and not even lifeless performances can dim the power of Problems or Bodies. Any flicker of life is doused by Anarchy in the UK - improved beyond measure by the addition of a drum solo - and a pitiful version of My Way, which Lydon barely bothers to sing at all. "I don't give a shit," he announces. Even by his current standards, that's a statement of the obvious.