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It started at 10am yesterday and by mid-afternoon reached epidemic proportions. Radiohead fans all over London complained that they felt unwell — well, that’s what you assume they must have told their bosses. Needs must, of course, when your favourite band are given to making last-minute pronouncements, as Radiohead are prone to. You imagined them smiling behind their terminals as a latest move is posted up and the fan forums descend into hysteria.

As happenings go, this impromptu gig — originally scheduled to take place at the Rough Trade East store — felt like a modern-day equivalent of The Beatles’ al fresco show on the rooftop of their Apple HQ. Except that, if you look at that footage now, it takes onlookers a while to realize what’s going on. Nearly four decades later, hundreds of expectant fans gathered together in anticipation — a three-dimensional replication of the group’s 2001 title Packt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box.

So many, in fact, that the police and council decreed that they formed a safety hazard. There followed a last-minute change of venue to 93 Feet East, some 50 yards away. If some fans were hacked off, their annoyance paled in comparison to roadies who had to lug equipment from one venue to the other at short notice.

When Radiohead appeared, over two hours later than promised, they proceeded to play all of In Rainbows — an album whose qualities at times have been almost eclipsed by the manner of its release. Four months ago, the assembled fans didn’t even know the album was about to appear.

They were word perfect on a taut 15 Step, clapping along to its bewildering jumping bean rhythm with unnerving accuracy. Thom Yorke threw rave shapes into the light. Beaming its way forward like a speeding snowplough, a sublimely heavy Bodysnatchers saw guitarist Jonny Greenwood oscillating between filigree fretwork and finger-shredding ectoplasmic scree.

So much for the myth that they no longer rock. The tiny venue suited a noisy Radiohead just fine and served to magnify the pathos of their gentler songs. Haloed in pink light, Yorke’s semi-falsetto revelled in the space afforded to it on Nude. Clapping resumed for an almost postcoital House Of Cards, distinguished by the sinuous, stoned economy of its delivery. They locked into a locomotive funk outro on The Reckoner, which comfortably transcended the claustrophobic ambience of its recorded counterpart.

But most remarkably of all, given the stresses of the previous few hours, they looked happy. and perhaps a little surprised that an album with such a long, laboured gestation period sounds so organic on the stage of a tiny East London venue. Not that Yorke cared to admit as much. “It’s been a very strange day,” he declared towards the end. “It’s possible that we might have to have a drink at the end of it.” After an electrifying encore of old favourites, National Anthem and You And Whose Army, those were sentiments to which more than a few plastic cups were raised.

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