CELEBRATING 40 years of filth, fury and general hilarity on the road, Fascinating Aida rocked up at Lighthouse to general acclaim.

The racy trio appeared in variations of black and red and, acknowledging their age, launched straight into their appreciation of later life, We’re Next/We’re Not Done yet.

And then, as chief protagonist Dillie Keane opined, it had been four decades and one greatest hit, so they might as well get it over with early.

Thus came the exceptional Cheap Flights, the homage to the difficulties and expense of budget air travel, which has had zillions of hits on popular music outlets.

Keane stopped the song after a few bars of the enthusiastic audience clapping. She said ‘Please don’t clap along, it’s not Butlins’ (I paraphrase here), a moment which beautifully set the tone for the show.

Fascinating Aida was formed by Keane in 1983, with Adèle Anderson joining nine months later with ‘young’ soprano Liza Pulman completing this line-up in 2004, so still the troupe’s Ronnie Wood and doing all the fetching and carrying.

The beauty of FA is that the filth and fury is generally disguised behind lovely cabaret tunes and an otherwise innocent appearance.

They had me hooked by the third song, Bestseller, about the ease that celebrities find in writing books, in which ‘Sibelius’ is rhymed with ‘failures’.

Anderson’s solo spot, Widows, was followed by Keane’s rant over the UK’s Citizenship Test and the German-inspired Lieder, which saw much Dietrich channelling, balancing on chairs and Keane struggling to get down from the piano stool.

Ah, the piano - the stool was mostly occupied by musical director, composer and pianist Michael Roulston who is a welcome addition to the trio, particularly on the Bulgarian song cycles, or was it Buglarians?

This was a series of short topical pieces, ranging from HS2, waterways and the Covid inquiry to Gweneth Paltrow, Kier Starmer and Laurence Fox.

Mistaken Identity saw Keane being taken for Naomi Campbell and Anderson as Angela Rippon and the first act ended memorably with Keane as ‘Lil Dil’ rapping on Down With The Kids.

Act 2 saw our leading ladies return all dressed up to the nines in sparkles galore, beginning with Bored, A.I. and Kangaroo, which saw a lot of bouncing, and the Hawaiian sounding Holidays.

Biggest cheer of the evening came with the announcement of the evening’s love song. What transpired was the absolute filth that is Dogging. This was followed by the poignant tale of leaving a house for the last time, Old Home, during which no punchline ever came.

The encore was the very clever Your Home Town, written around Poole, of course, and mentioning places as diverse as New Milton, Puddletown and Swanage.

Fascinating Aida is very much my kind of cabaret, wickedly hilarious, not afraid to stick their heads above the parapet. Keane may be less mobile these days, but she does, indeed, actually manage to get down from that piano stool.