IN recent years there’s been no shortage of 1980s pop stars reliving their glory days as they stage retro tours to the delight of their now grown-up original audience.

Nik Kershaw, the diminutive teen idol who out-stripped all other soloists to spend a whopping 50 weeks in the charts during 1984, is one such act.

And it’s fair to say, despite a small number of younger fans, his audience were largely in their 40s and 50s and clearly still knew every word of every hit from albums like Human Racing, The Riddle and Radio Musicola.

But here’s the thing – Mr Kershaw is really very, very good. His song-writing, with its clever, rather quirkily English lyrics covering everything from romance to environmental responsibility, was innovative back then and certainly stands the test of time.

Despite some people probably thinking he was all about the programmed synths, his background is as a jazz-funk guitarist and the thrumming drum and baselines, along with skilful lead guitar fretwork, are testament to that. The vocals are also still spot-on, high notes included.

He’s released eight albums – the most recent appropriately called ‘8’ – but the audience at the O2 were mainly interested in the earlier songs including Don Quixote, Human Racing, Wouldn’t It Be Good and, of course, the anthemic I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.

That said, his newer material was also warmly welcomed and with a talented band behind him – the bass player was great fun with his ‘slap and pop’ style a la Mark King – he couldn’t put a foot wrong.

As my 13-year-old daughter – now a Kershaw fan – put it: “The only thing he’s lost is his big eighties hair!” Well put.