ON the very night that U2 made their belated Glastonbury debut to thousand upon thousand, old stadium sparring partners Simple Minds were falling short of selling out a woodland glade in North Yorkshire.

The contrast emphasised how Bono’s preachermen still break new ground whereas Jim Kerr’s 33-year-old slugger has become a proficient heritage act well past the street-fighting years.

Once upon a time they were mysterious, futuristic, and Kerr wore eyeliner, then came the post-New Gold Dream watershed of the clattering Waterfront, when subtlety and grace were shown the door and they looked to America rather than Europe.

“Are you ready?” asked Kerr. “Let me see your hands” he pleaded, as the thudding default position kicked in immediately . The Simple Mindset for the night was to play the stadium way, the Don’t You Forget About Me way, the female backing singer way, while “touching on all the different chapters” of a career now into its fourth decade.

And so Love Song and Celebrate paid lip service to the seductive, sinuous early days but each was overstretched, bloated, the band better suited to the encore clout of footie anthem Alive And Kicking and an extended Ghostdancing with a cover of Gloria wrapped inside it. Disappointingly too, Kerr cut Up On The Catwalk at the point where he used to list inspirations: a missed chance to update it.

He spoke of the future at the end, and aired anonymous new material from an upcoming new album, but sadly there will never be another new gold dream, just an old re-sold one.