By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****

Lightning Seeds setlist: Change; Sugar Coated Iceberg; Sense; Perfect; Whole Wide World; You Showed Me; Lucky You; Pure; The Life Of Riley

Madness setlist: One Step Beyond; Embarrassment; The Prince; C’est La Vie; NW5; My Girl; The Sun And The Rain; Hour Of Need; Wings Of A Dove; Lovestruck; Run For Your Life; Bed And Breakfast Man; Shut Up; Round We Go; Mr Apples; House Of Fun; Baggy Trousers; Our House; It Must Be Love; Madness; Night Boat To Cairo

The Uptown Festival returned for its 2nd outing on Blackheath in south-east London and Camden’s ska/pop band Madness were the suitably raucous headliners.

• Read on for reasons including how this was a hugely enjoyable event on our doorstep in beautiful weather that we would like to see return to this brilliant venue year after year

The Uptown Festival’s main stage is on a hill above Greenwich that overlooks the Thames and provides this London band a chance to survey their city as the sun comes down on a family festival that they are the main draw for this year.

Their set includes the 70s and 80s hits for which they are best known but also some choice cuts from last year’s chart-topping album Theatre Of The Absurb Presents C’est La Vie which reunited them with the production team – Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley – behind most of their beloved work.

The crowd are a mixture of ages, many sporting the flat-topped conical red hat or fez that the band wore in their pomp, with many as we are likely to have been in our youth when the band first formed in 1976.

Ska can be quite chaotic and from the off, the saxophone-fuelled One Step Beyond, we’re never in any doubt that the band, which includes 6 of its 7 original members, are going to give us the hits-fuelled show we want to see.

There is a lot of communal singing of hits that very much conjure up a time and place including school days for some and a late run of some of their finest work including House Of Fun, Baggy Trousers and Our House illustrate what great songwriters they are.

We also earlier enjoyed Lightning Seeds (who we’ve seen at this very venue perform at a different festival called ONBlackheath) and they can always be provided on to give entertaining support.

Ian Broudie didn’t play Three Lions but he did play an unexpected cover which had members of our group scratching their heads about who sang the original.

His mention of the late Terry Hall who he had worked with was also a reminder of the ska origins that inspired this line-up.

If we had 1 criticism it would be that there weren’t enough picnic benches in the VIP area. But, overall, this was a hugely enjoyable event on our doorstep in beautiful weather that we would like to see return to this brilliant venue year after year.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Uptown Festival Tickets
• Have you seen a Madness show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this preview? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook