Diddley has always seemed like an indestructible veteran of the golden age of blues and early rock'n'roll, but at 75 the mileage is beginning to catch up with him. Presumably to avoid him having to negotiate the Jazz Cafe staircase, Bo was helped to the stage through the audience, a gnarled and grizzly figure in a diaphanous crimson suit, topped off by a black hat with a silver emblem attached to the crown. He performed the show sitting down, as though returning at last to the bluesman's metaphorical back porch.

The performance had been cunningly designed to showcase highlights from Bo's 50-year career, while building in enough padding to ensure that he didn't have to over-exert himself. Thus, his 1959 hit Crackin' Up made an early appearance, but then evolved into a pointless reggae jam. Likewise, the mighty Who Do You Love, the best place to study the full kicking-mule force of the "Bo Diddley beat", erupted in a blaze of drums and raucous guitar, then after the impact had worn off fizzled out in more feeble boogie-by-the-yard.

Bo had surrounded himself with an unusual band, featuring a solidly built female bassist wearing some sort of pearly carnival hat, and a keyboard player in horn-rimmed glasses who looked like she'd just slipped away from a whist drive to spend a couple of hours tickling the ivories. On second guitar there was a Dan Aykroyd-lookalike, who spent the evening unobtrusively thickening up Bo's haphazard riffs and applying artful bluesy embellishments.

From time to time there was a flash of vintage Bo, like his barking vocals in I'm a Man, and a selection of terrible jokes, but for some reason he'd decided to use a horrible tremolo effect on his guitar which made it sound like a sound effect from Dr Who. Scarcely an epic occasion, but most punters seemed pleased to be in the presence of a legend.