CityLife

More festive Madness this December

SNAPPY DRESSERS: Madness

AS the usual hallmarks of a traditional British Christmas – snow, turkey dinners and Christmas pud, robin redbreasts, even religion – start to look like archaic symbols of the past, everyone is searching for the new spirit of the season.

And CityLife reckons it might just have found it: making sure that retired rock stars get to spend their Christmas Day in style by purchasing pricey tickets for their year-end jaunts.

True to this new signifier that Christmas is coming, one of the 1980s most genre-defining bands, Madness, will set out on another festive tour this winter, arriving at the Apollo on December 15.

And you can help keep Suggs in sharp grey suits this winter by going along.

We jest, of course, but the truth is that these gigs have become something of the starting gun for everyone’s festive cheer.

Nostalgia is, after all, 50 per cent of the essential Christmas brew (re-runs of It’s A Wonderful Life and Morecambe & Wise, anyone?) and what happier times are there than high-stepping round the dancefloor to Baggy Trousers? 

Plus with their most acclaimed LP (The Liberty Of Norton Folgate) in years now in their armoury and a new greatest hits (Total Madness, out September 21) to follow, expect even more nutty pandemonium come December.

Madness play the Apollo on Tuesday, December 15.