In October 2004, Marc Almond suffered critical injuries in a near-fatal motorbike accident and spent two weeks unconscious. Two and a half years later, the physical and psychological scars remain: he admits he is "scared to death" at playing his first full shows back, close by the scene of the crash.

Yet the suited and booted Almond is looking good at this comeback gig, in the splendid environs of a startlingly decayed old music hall. As his confidence returns, so does his waspish wit: "I don't mind being a friend of Dorothy, but I don't want to be a friend of Elton," he informs the throng, with a coyly vicious smirk.

His latest project is Stardom Road, an album of cover versions, but he visits it sparingly tonight. Instead, he ranges freely through his 25-year back catalogue of scarlet, largely autobiographical torch songs of people who have loved too much and too lustily, often returning to his landmark 1987 album Mother Fist & Her Five Daughters.

Almond is in fine voice, powerfully hitting notes that once he would tremble around, with Charles Aznavour's I Have Lived and Yesterday When I Was Young both perfect for his brand of lurid camp confessional. His new material, such as Soho So Long and Redeem Me, finds him waving goodbye to years of chemical and sexual excess, while defiantly not regretting a minute of them.

"I'm turning 50 soon, and I'll get at least two albums out of it," he says, but after a career founded on angst and pain, Marc Almond looks to be heading into middle age remarkably contented. After 20 solo albums and a near-death experience, he's become what he always wanted to be: a glorious survivor.