Idiotically introduced by broadcaster Zane Lowe as "one of the great collaborations of our time", The Good, The Bad And The Queen promised many things, but chiefly a revolutionary clash of cultures and personalities.

What actually happened at this BBC Electric Prom (broadcast on BBC3 tomorrow night and online at www.bbc.co.uk/electricproms until Thursday) was rather different, despite the participants: Blur frontman Damon Albarn, Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong and Tony Allen, the finest African drummer of his generation.

See more pictures from the concert here

They played their self-titled album in order, plus the B-side Mr Whippy and that was very much that.

Cultures did not clash; they did not even jostle. The project turned out to be a straightforward Albarn vehicle, a more polished sibling of his previous solo album, 2003's limited release Demo Crazy.

Simonon's bass was high in the mix, but, aside from a brief solo before The Bunting Song, Allen might as well have joined us from Lambeth rather than Lagos.

There were hints of The Kinks in Albarn's whimsical eye for detail (Green Fields spoke of Goldhawk Road) or Madness in the frequently deployed fairground organ, while The Clash briefly appeared when Kingdom Of Doom hijacked the introduction to London Calling.

There was even a nod to daft German metallers The Scorpions when Albarn re-created Wind Of Change's whistling segment during A Soldier's Tale, but most of all, and most surprisingly of all, Blur loomed large.

Naturally Albarn's voice ensures everything he does sounds Blur-esque (recruiting another singer seems almost too obvious to mention if he truly wants distance from his day job), but these slow, lolloping often beautiful songs belonged to the Blur of For Tomorrow and To The End.

So, while The Good, The Bad And The Queen might be a waste of personnel, they are not a waste of time. Albarn's songwriting dander is most certainly up.

Attired in a malevolent undertaker's top hat, rather than his customary teenager-sulking-after-his latest-Asbo look, Albarn strived so keenly for perfection that the covert dictator stopped and re-started the stately Three Changes, declaring ominously that "we need to re-focus" and almost gave himself a hernia during the frantic finale to The Good, The Bad And The Queen itself.

There was no encore and Albarn's parting words, "I've enjoyed this, warts and all", suggested he hadn't really enjoyed it at all. A shame really: everybody else seemed to.