Cyndi Lauper arrived on the stage with a piece of cardboard in one hand and a hammer in the other, knelt down with difficulty — boy, were those leather trousers tight — and started the show by banging beats on the floor through the card. The singer who spent her 1980s heyday as the screwball foil to the more calculating Madonna has clearly lost none of her quirky charm.

Nor has she shed as many fans as you might expect. There was barely breathing room at Shepherds Bush Empire and the tumultuous cheers that greeted the short, slim, blonde bob-sporting Lauper suggested that those aware that she is still making music hadn’t just come for the hits. Indeed, the 55-year-old is on the verge of a commercial comeback, thanks to her current album Bring Ya to the Brink, a classy collection of beats-backed tracks made with a host of hip young producers.

Bouts of demonic dancing, daft stories delivered in her nasal, “New Yawk” whine and a spell of flirtation with a mortified security guard added a sense of fun to a fast-paced show that relied on Lauper’s versatile, emotive vocals to raise the music far beyond pedestrian pop. The opener Change of Heart was a badly dated bombastic rocker played by a four-piece, middle-aged, male band, but Lauper infused it with soul and her energy was infectious. When she jumped on to a chair down in the crowd, a hundred hands tried to grab her. Mostly they belonged to gay men, who spent the show either punching the air or filming the singer on their camera phones.

She Bop, Lauper’s controversial ode to masturbation, was magnificently moody; her passionate guitar playing on a cover of Prince’s When U Were Mine contrasted sharply with Madonna’s faux rock chick moves and a folk arrangement of Time after Time, on which she played the dulcimer, was luminously lovely.

Oldies and techno-tinged newies went down equally well. The highlight was either the new single Into the Nightlife, a deliciously dizzy disco stomper that got the crowd dancing, or an extended Girls Just Want to Have Fun, performed as a duet with the sexy young unknown Jesse Jane, that delved into calypso and electro before fans drowned out the duo. Lauper may insist that she never went away, but it definitely looks as if she’s back.

Tonight, Carling Academy, Glasgow

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