Germany remains one of the few countries not to have followed the trend for all-seater football stadiums. Indeed, so partial is your average Teutonic Fußball fan to standing at matches that they launched a campaign to preserve their terraces. The translated version of the slogan they adopted for this was “Sitting is for arses.”

The minimal seating on offer at Harlow’s The Square then would surely satisfy our bratwurst-chomping, stein-swilling friends from good, old Deutschland. As would the lively mosh-pit antics. Maybe live music is the new football after all.

First up is local band Miko. Ranging in age from local-scally upwards to middle-aged frontman, they’re ‘Size-of-a-Cow’-era The Wonderstuff. Reinterpreted by Mike Batt.

Then it’s the turn of Stuffy and the Fuses. Fronted by a singing drummer with a talent for banter that’s reminiscent of Phill Jupitus, when the latter was both younger, and, isn’t it always the way?, funnier, they set the scene perfectly for headliners The Scaramanga Six. With a set that gives indie-pop a good name, as concise as it is clever.

Drawing fairly heavily from impending fourth album The Kiss of Death, The Six, with the suavest drummer this side of Charlie Watts, both tease and deliver with a selection of classic pomp rock songs shot through with the post-modern irony. Arses are most definitely conspicuous by their absence tonight. And this in spite of the fact tonight’s gig attracts what seems to be roughly a quarter of Essex’s entire public-school population.

(5/5)