Battling the office-party roar at Ronnie's this year are Ray Gelato and his Giants, a crowd-pleasing septet with enough fortitude to seize the slot gamely filled by George Melly in Christmases past.

Having shared the bill with George for three gruelling years, Ray knows better than to expect the kind of decorum experienced when his band played at Buckingham Palace for the Queen, or later at the McCartney-Mills wedding, a gig mysteriously deleted from their latest press releases.

After a warm-up set by club manager Leo Green's Experience, they hustled into action with a medley of two-beat swingers from the book of Louis Prima, a singing, trumpet-playing Lake Tahoe hero dear to Ray's heart. As the proud son of an Italian-American GI, Ray delivers his vocals in gruff accents pitched somewhere between Balham and the Bronx, followed by lusty tenor-sax solos in the style of Swing Era stars such as Coleman Hawkins and Illinois Jacquet.

It's a well-tested formula that mixes standards (That's Amore, My Kind of Girl, Sunny Side of the Street, When You're Smiling) with jazz classics made famous by Duke Ellington (Topsy), Count Basie (Little Pony) and Lionel Hampton (Flying Home).

Enjoying life in their maroon blazers were newcomers, drummer Elliott Henshaw and Minneapolis bassist Mike Janusch, sharing the doo-wop group vocals with trumpeter Danny Marsden, trombonist Andy Rogers and pianist Gunther Kuhrmayer and pacing saxophone duels between Gelato and young Alex Garnett. Relaxed as they all looked, the band's frontline riffs and drum accents were timed with razorsharp precision.

It's hard to imagine anyone else combining stylish versions of Stardust and Birth of the Blues with slick Italian novelties Buona Sera Signorina and Why You Gotta Take My Last Meat Ball, but Ray covers a lot of ground. I counted 18 numbers before the end of his 90-minute set, which ended with Ray minus his jacket, blowing in shirt and braces.

Making almost as much noise as his bandwas a table of nine to the left of the stage. Apparently they were Australians with something or other to celebrate. Normally staff would have inquired whether the band was spoiling their evening, but what the hell, it's nearly Christmas.
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