Three months from now, the post-emo rockers My Chemical Romance will bring their “Black Parade” to Wembley Arena and sweat will smudge the mascara of a thousand excitable teenage faces. Would those teenagers be comforted or horrified to realise that when the Scissor Sisters came to town, their mums engaged in eerily similar behaviour? Indeed, it’s a quirk of these middle-youthy times that the screaming no longer abates with age. Where a certain kind of Scissor Sisters fan is concerned — primped highlights; pink cowboy hat; tipsy; careful, you could have someone’s eye out with that glo-stick — it’s intrinsic to one’s enjoyment of such an evening.

If Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears acts as a focus for the band’s gay following, his right-hand woman, Ana Matronic, is no less an aspirational icon for those women. Dressed respectively in a glittering black two-piece and rouched designer dress, they initially looked more impressive than they sounded. She’s My Man may be a standout from the group’s second album Ta-Dah — but if you shut your eyes you could have been standing in a wind tunnel listening to Elton John on a cheap radio.

Four songs later, the sound improved, but Shears had to search hard for the missing notes between his falsetto and the rest of his range. Still, he compensated in other ways — leaping off the speakers during Take Your Mama, delivering a tap turn for I Can’t Decide and merging well with Ana Matronic on that still-brilliant disco demolition of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb.

If only for the fact that it sounds tailor-made for the utilitarian leisure barns of Britain, the dystopian robo-pop of Transistor was no less effective — but on reflection, it was probably a mistake to keep the screens on during the song. In its magnified form, the demonic stare that Shears deploys when attempting to emote his lyrics is the stuff of lysergic nightmares.

You could have said the same about his outfit for the encore — a PVC approximation of Coventry City’s famously tasteless 1970s strip. Not, it must be said, that anyone was standing and staring by this point. As no doubt happens at the end of every Scissor Sisters show these days, Babydaddy’s acoustic intro to I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ triggered hitherto unseen levels of mum-hem. As perfect pop contradictions go, we hadn’t seen the like since 10cc told us they weren’t in love.