There’s nothing quite so dispiriting as a festival on a dark, dank, damp, Dickensian evening. And with the briskest of chill winds whistling through Hackney, you could have wept for the fifth Madstock, where ice cream vans were unpatronised and coffee stalls were doing better trade than the beer tents.

On one stage Shane MacGowan sported an ominous eye-patch as The Pogues stumbled through their hits. On another, Bjorn Again’s Abba karaoke battled with the rain and lost. I don’t recall the original Take A Chance On Me having a spectacularly inept rap halfway through.

And then there was Madness and suddenly all was well with the world. As young men, Madness always had an umbilical connection with their crowd. Thirty years since their debut single The Prince, the connection is unbroken and unquestioned. From the opening One Step Beyond, the sodden turf was awash with middle-aged folk doing the Nutty Boys dance, grinning like children, alongside their own children.

When the wind didn’t distort the sound, the hits remained undimmed by time, be it the knowing innocence of Our House, the all-too-apt Grey Day or the delightfully silly Night Boat To Cairo, which featured Specials leader Jerry Dammers, whose regrets about missing his own band’s reunion can hardly have been assuaged.

As singer Suggs said, “it’s a London thing” and Pearly kings and queens introduced the encore, before dozens of smiling, gyrating relatives invaded the stage for the grand finale, the song Madness. Cor, and further more, blimey.