Spec-wearers of the world unite, your time has come.

Uber-nerd Graham Coxon is making it cool to be a geek.

The former Blur guitarist's headscratching, bumbling diffidence is hardly the stuff of rock gods but he sure can play.

He strolled onto the stage dressed in a T-shirt, jeans and trademark glasses.

"I don't really want to start. I just want to talk crap," he told his fans, glass in hand. "Did I leave the oven on?"

His nasal adolescent singing style owes much to the Buzzcock's Pete Shelley but his music has a harder edge and when he launches into a gleeful Can't Look At Your Skin, the kids at the front start moshing.

Coxon may be old enough to be their dad but he gets away with it.

I'd forgotten how good a song Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery is it sounds like Ray Davies at his most sublime. The hook burrows under your skin and hums in your head for days and Coxon's warm guitar break makes you want to melt.

He may be pushing 40 and look like his mum still cuts his hair but perhaps that is the point. We are all teenagers at heart and love can hurt just as much when you are older.

"The next one's a bit like the others," he says after virtually every song in his typical throwaway style.

Spectacular lives up to its name as the band really hit their stride.

You get the impression Coxon likes to turn his amp up to 11 at every opportunity.

They deliver blistering versions of Standing On My Own Again, I Don't Wanna Go Out and Gimme Some Love from the new album Love Travels At Illegal Speeds His best known-song Freakin' Out, with its circa '77 riff, is a crowd-pleaser and the band unleash a sonic onslaught.

For those in the audience, like myself, able to remember the golden days of the late Seventies, it was a step back in time to a more innocent age.

Coxon may look like a loser but he doesn't play like one.