Gig review: Wet Wet Wet, Glasgow

So successful back in the 1990s that they didn’t just fill football stadiums but could even afford to sponsor their own team, the since-gone-bust Clydebank band Wet Wet Wet have been steadily restoring themselves in the public’s affections following their cautious reformation in 2004.

Wet Wet Wet: A celebratory sold-out homecoming show. Picture: Cate Gillon

Wet Wet Wet - The Hydro, Glasgow

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This celebratory sold-out homecoming show did a power of work to that end, capping a Greatest Hits tour, the first UK sojourn in several years by the original Scottish man band.

Singer Marti Pellow will be more familiar to many people these days as a stage musical star, or the butt of some deliciously cruel sketches by Glaswegian comedian Limmy.

But with his full-beam smile he remains a housewives’ favourite, still capable of winning lusty screams for nothing more than taking his jacket off.

Julia Says made short work of hurling everyone back to a time when an episode of Top of the Pops was barely complete without the Wets.

The blue-eyed soul-pop of Sweet Little Mystery reached back further still to the late Eighties juncture when “four guys fae Clydebank who decided to start a band” – as bassist Graeme Clark later put it – suddenly had the world at their feet.

The big swaying ballads bit – Temptation and Goodnight Girl being the biggest among them – was inevitably a bit of a slog. The horns-dappled party funk of Big Sister Midnight restored the festive mood, before Love Is All Around – their 15-week number one had to feature somewhere – closed with toe-curling singalong naffness, if also solid proof of what Pellow meant when explained that all the Wets ever wanted was “to put a smile on people’s faces, and make a few bob”.