It was not announced beforehand, but in the end the whole of Pink Floyd showed up at the Barbican to pay their respects to Syd Barrett, the man who invented the group in 1965. Roger Waters, who closed the first half of the Madcap’s Last Laugh show on his own, was the only performer not to sing one of Barrett’s songs, but spoke instead of his memories of the mercurial singer, guitarist and songwriter, who died almost a year ago. And right at the end, David Gilmour, Rick Wright and Nick Mason emerged from the wings to perform the first Pink Floyd single, Arnold Layne, lending historical weight to a tribute concert that was designed with scrupulous attention to detail by the producer and writer Joe Boyd and performed in an unusual spirit of humility by all involved.

There was quite a queue to reach the stage, which was bathed in an appropriately psychedelic swirl of oily, pulsating, coloured blobs, that recalled the ambience of the Middle Earth club in the Sixties. The Sense of Sound Choir opened with a delightful a cappella version of Bike, and later provided an inspired accompaniment – their voices arranged to sound like bells ringing – to a version of Chapter 24, led by the event’s musical director, Nick Laird-Clowes. Captain Sensible demonstrated a previously unsuspected prowess as both a singer and guitarist with his closely observed interpretations of Astronomy Domine and Flaming.

Chrissie Hynde hacked away at a couple of songs from Barrett’s solo album The Madcap Laughs, Robyn Hitchcock, accompanied by John Paul Jones and Ruby Wright, captured the folk whimsy side of Barrett with his version of Terrapin, and there were contributions from Damon Albarn, Kevin Ayers, Martha Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle, Mike Heron, Vashti Bunyan, the Bees, Neulander and others.

Additionally there was a handful of judiciously chosen film clips, including a priceless TV interview in which Barrett was called to account by a pundit who began by declaring that he found Pink Floyd’s music boring, loud and lacking any musical merit. It was plainly the Madcap’s last laugh, in more ways than one.

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