Jarvis Cocker hadn't been to York for ages.

Probably since his schooldays, visiting the National Railway Museum, getting "done in" for rolling down the Clifford's Tower hillock. Or maybe in a Jorvik former life as a "warrior marauding down your streets putting your women to the sword".

Welcome to the Jarvis stand-up side-show, as much an essential feature of Pulp live as his elegantly scuffed songs from the streets and now the back garden. Over the course of 100 minutes, he talked "rubbish" - his word - about Mike Yarwood, Keith Harris, Shaw Taylor and the smoking and alcohol ban in the Barbican, making a joke about the alcohol-free lager of the same name.

He is that rarity in British rock, a true front man, showman and entertainer, still the pipe-cleaner-slim spindly dancer, still wearing the cast-offs from secondhand shops - last night it was a bad Seventies sitcom combination of brown flared slacks and brown pullover - and still working his band to the max. Even in the encores, he appeared to be exchanging views with guitarist Richard Hawley, each gesticulating before Cocker made light of it with a brief flurry of martial hand chops.

Significantly, too, Pulp keep progressing. They left out Disco 2000, Help The Aged, Do You Remember The First Time? and, unbelievably, their anthem Common People and yet, trust me, it still was a magnificent show, constructed around the cornerstones of 1995's Different Class (five selections) and this autumn's grandiose We Love Life (half-a-dozen).

Pulp have not gone back to basics but back to nature, with Jarvis in appropriately bare feet, in front of back-projection images of blooming flowers, observing the Birds In Your Garden and Sunrise, the epic finale before the double encore delights of Sorted For Es And Wizz, The Trees and Underwear. Jarvis, as nature intended.

Updated: 12:53 Thursday, November 22, 2001