Apart from Madness, how many bands can claim to support an ancillary micro industry in comedy headgear? The SECC is ringed by enterprising vendors doing a roaring trade in Nutty Boy signature hats – be it rude boy pork-pie numbers with a two-tone checked trim, or the trademark fez favoured by sax man Lee Thompson, tonight clad in a garish yellow tartan suit.
Having this summer performed everywhere from the rooftop of Buckingham Palace for the Queen's diamond jubilee to the back of a flatbed truck circuiting the Olympic Stadium at the closing concert for this summer's London games, Madness's pre-Christmas Charge of the Mad Brigade tour returns them to more sensible stages. It caps a year that has enshrined their status as a national treasure, more than three decades after their formation – back when, as Suggs puts it, "Muse were just a twinkle in their granpappy's eyes".
Enjoying their shows is a well-established ritual. Chas Smash's echo-bathed "Hey you! Don't watch that, watch this … " spiel at the start of opener One Step Beyond is finished by the crowd at volume, before a mass rash of skanking demonstrates how Madness fans once managed to trigger a small earthquake in London. Viewed from the stands at the back of the arena, it looks curiously like several thousand people furiously hammering away on gym cross-trainers.
The release of Madness's 10th album Oui Oui Si Si Ja Ja Da Da might have been somewhat overshadowed by their primetime televised glories, but it serves notice of rude boys in rude health. The likes of My Girl 2 – which practically borrows the stabbing chords from Tainted Love – and Misery signal a band in easy and willing command of their music's most identifiable and joyful qualities: goodtime horns, clicking rhythms and Suggs's pubby witticisms. "If you keep misery as your company," he half-sings during the latter tune, "you might as well be dead."
House of Fun, Baggy Trousers, Our House and It Must Be Love is as remarkable run of indelible pop songs as you'll hear any British band string together. The energy levels haven't been as high all set – we could have been done without Thompson cobbling through an a cappella Alex Harvey number. But it only heightens the delirium of the hit-studded finale, culminating with the daft honk of Night Boat to Cairo, Suggs lifting Thompson's fez to theatrically mop his brow during the sax solo as knees and elbows fly, and Richter-scale needles tremble ever so slightly one last time.
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