When Menswear and Echobelly had been relegated to the Britpop basement bucket, Blur continued to write number one singles. They even managed to do the trickiest thing in music: get better with age.

That much became obvious as Graham Coxon scratched out that unmistakable intro to Beetlebum, its lo-fi, era-defining crunch slicing through the Hyde Park dusk at a celebratory show filled with two decades of hits.

Tender, which marked Damon Albarn as a sonic explorer who would eventually bring world music to indie fans, was another bold and successful comeback single fusing artistic reinvention with pop knowhow. Here, bomber-jacket clad Albarn barely had to sing the chorus as a boozy crowd turned soppy for a lilting love-in.

Phil Daniels made his customary appearance to steamroller through another genre-setter: Parklife, which was naff in all the right ways, and a riot. Song 2, which sparked mosh-pits stretching all the way back to the Marble Arch, was equally raucous.

Plus ça change, you could almost hear Alex James utter as he puffed on fags, flicked his floppy fringe and lazily lent into the spaghetti low-end of Girls and Boys, He Thought Of Cars and beautiful set-closer, The Universal.

Plus ça change indeed. The quartet, joined by backing singers, strings, brass and a fully functioning ice cream van, looked as if the last 20 years has hardly happened.

Their characters are as defined today as they always were, and there is a fair chance Coxon's been wearing the same specs since he sat down to write the opening lines of There's No Other Way in a Colchester bedroom at the turn of the Nineties.

Mr Whippy's presence and the ice cream visuals reminded the band have new material to share - 12 years since Think Tank and with Coxon back in the fold.

Those unable to reach the bar amid the melee at hearing a few unrecognised chords would surely admit The Magic Whip has much to dig your teeth into. Studio album number eight offers new musical perspectives and, most importantly, makes Blur a going concern.

Chastened, rejuvenated, regenerated, the band looked unstoppable. No wonder Albarn was handing out 99s with a flake.

Five stars