YES it was Robert smith up there-but until he opened his mouth to sing, it could have been one of several tease-haired, panda-eyed look-alikes dotted about this Teenage Cancer Trust benefit. With no new album to promote, it was a perfect chance for these hardy Goth emissaries from Crawley to have some fun with their 250-strong canon of recorded songs.

This was a set lovingly put together for the diehards who have followed The Cure through thick and thin (and Smith’s waistline through thin and thick). And it was heartwarming to register their reaction as obscurities such as A Strange Day and At Night were exhumed from their slumber. Some scrubbed up surprisingly well.

Played by a more accomplished four-piece than the group who recorded it 26 years ago, Play for Today hurtled along with hitherto unimaginable abandon.

Originally on “suicide premonition” album The Top, the macabre funk of Shake Dog Shake set about replicating the sound of a thousand ghosts being rattled out of the ether.

At their best, these old songs reminded you that The Cure were always a great pop band in the making. Just as many though, seemed to underscore the limitations of the genre from which they emerged.

It didn’t help that The Cure’s video backdrop evinced the production values of an old episode of Mini Pops. Hence, on faux-flamenco wig-out The Blood, we saw a Spanish señorita gliding across the screen; on the squally 1991 hit Never Enough, an image of brightly coloured pills appeared. That the lighting suddenly went monochrome for The Figurehead should have served as a warning for anyone whose early 1980s weren’t spent forsaking food and heating for snakebite and black hair dye. Five minutes into the song, the 46-year-old frontman’s hair had conspicuously succumbed to gravity — as had the less devoted sections of the audience, who took to their seats.

Images of what news reporters term “the human cost of war” accompanied One Hundred Years and you wondered whether it would have been so bad to have some of those Cure songs that cheer people up when played on the radio? Twenty-seven songs in — with only Inbetween Days and Just Like Heaven to leaven the mood — Robert Smith reached the same conclusion.

Addressing the audience, he announced, “Here’s some pop because we just remembered it’s Saturday night”.

Lullaby, Hot Hot Hot!!! and Friday I’m in Love followed and, finally, we had cause to believe in a just and merciful Goth.