Towards the end of his first, brief, tour since suffering a stroke three years ago, Edwyn Collins gave a soulful and heart-warming account of himself in circumstances that would surely have finished off the careers of most performers. Still severely disabled, he just about got himself to the centre of the Empire stage with the help of a black cane. His right hand remained balled into an immovable fist in his lap as he sat on an amp, reading the lyrics from a stand set to his side. His speech was still somewhat impaired, although what he actually said between songs was clearer than a lot of the announcements you get to hear from a rock stage.

Mercifully, miraculously even, his singing voice retained its lovely, warm timbre as he began with Falling and Laughing, a track from the first album by Orange Juice, the cult indie-pop band with which Collins made his name in the 1980s.

The set that followed proceeded along broadly similar lines to that of his comeback show at the BBC Electric Proms last October. There were other numbers from the Orange Juice days such as Rip It Up and Poor Old Soul, together with favourites from his subsequent solo career and a handful of songs from his latest album, Home Again (recorded before his stroke, but mixed and released afterwards).

His band, which featured the guitarists Roddy Frame (of Aztec Camera) and Andy Hackett, was superb. And if Collins’s pitching was a little wayward from time to time, the quality of the musicianship around him was little short of perfection. Frame, in particular, produced an epic performance on Girl Like You, which Collins sang with a bold yet tender touch.

Ultimately it was the indomitable spirit of the man that was key to a show freighted, at times, with an almost unbearable weight of emotion. “I will always be lucky with my life,” Collins sang in I’m Searching for the Truth, a simple, sweet refrain, written since his stroke.

You would certainly wish for nothing else.

Tour continues tonight at the Village, Dublin; Mandela Hall, Belfast

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