Jay Richardson: Love is still around for the boys from Clydebank

CURRENTLY starring in the London West End production of Blood Brothers, the news that Marti Pellow is reuniting with his Wet Wet Wet kinsmen for this huge comeback gig and rumoured new album, only goes to show that regardless of blood and water’s consistency, your hometown’s affection and the promise of a bumper cash windfall can reconcile all creative indifference.

The Wets have crooned Goodnight Girl a final time before of course, reforming in 2004 to modest success.

Never a band with any tremendous surplus of cred – Pellow’s broad, boyish grin made him a ludicrously handsome frontman – they don’t have much cool or artistic cachet to squander. Love Is All Around will never attain the anthemic status afforded to The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles, as, lest we forget, it was the Scot who perished in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

How those of us watching in the cinema envied him.

Regardless, the eyes and ears of Scotland will be keenly trained on Pellow and Co come July when they resume the stage.

Modern celebrity embraces third acts and Pellow, the comeback kid from Clydebank, ought to be guaranteed a warm welcome from his ain folk.

His drug addiction has been widely publicised but he fed that experience into the musical Jekyll and Hyde, which drew poignancy from the young, twinkly-eyed pop idol turned slightly raddled song-and-dance man.

No-one expects Wet Wet Wet to resume the million-record selling glories of their heyday..

But I rather suspect there’s plenty of love left all around for them yet.