Say what you like about Pete Doherty, he knows how to make a dramatic entrance. Fresh out of jail for the umpteenth time, Britain’s most sybaritic singer played a rowdy sell-out show. In Rat Pack suit and dapper trilby, Doherty appeared in rude health and good spirits. The overall mood of the evening was celebratory, even during the minor bout of booing that punctuated the cheers.

In theory, all is going swimmingly for Babyshambles. Their second album, Shotter’s Nation, was favourably reviewed, their arena shows were the best received of their career, and Doherty has finally kicked his drug addiction, or so he claims. Of course, this louche literary lout has cried Virginia Woolf many times before, so any boasts about a clean bill of health come with a health warning of their own.

All the same, he gave an energetic performance last night, rattling through ramshackle crowd-pleasers including Pipedown, Delivery and Kilimangiro. To his champions, Doherty is a guttersnipe sage and icon of dissolute cool. To his detractors he is an overhyped mockney Artful Dodger, a third division talent with a premier league profile.

To agnostics like this reviewer, the singer has hit the occasional peak in a mostly underwhelming career. This show only confirmed that Doherty is still more reliant on charisma than musical talent.

When he hauled the ex-Pogues singer Shane MacGowan up to sing Dirty Old Town, the gravel- throated old gargoyle effortlessly exposed the younger singer’s feeble voice and scrappy songwriting.

Doherty may be more Shane Richie than Shane MacGowan, but he is clearly not a pop emperor entirely without clothes. The Albion of his lyrics and journals is a rich literary landscape incorporating everyone from Charles Dickens to Chas and Dave, Thomas de Quincey to Tony Hancock, William Blake to Blakey from On The Buses. Unfortunately, too much of this richness gets lost in translation from page to stage. There was plenty of excitement at this show, but too much of it was generated by the crowd. For a band who draw on such an ambitious range of inspirations, Babyshambles spent too much of their set sounding like pub-rock amateurs. After a dozen soundalike plodders their low-rent charm began to wear very thin indeed.

His Albion may look magnificent if you are pumped full of chemicals, but it feels a little threadbare and grubby to those sober enough to stand up straight.

— Pete Doherty plays a solo show at Manchester Academy on Saturday

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