"For those of you who don't know, THIS is ska!"

Wearing fancy dress so scary that small children cried and ran away (nice one, Elaine) we saw ska legends Bad Manners live at the Rocket festival here in Andalucía.

Half a lifetime ago, I alone voted for Bad Manners as 'The Best Band of the Eighties' in a Trent Polytechnic student magazine poll at the end of 1989.

Predictably enough, all the posh southern students voted for miserable, introspective poets of one kind or another and The Smiths won the vote.

Well, The Smiths were great in their way but you wouldn't want to get stuck in a pub with any of them, would you? They couldn't party like Buster Bloodvessel and his mates. And where are The Smiths now, anyway?

Bad Manners are considered very silly, but they are in fact highly accomplished reggae musicians (they've been gigging more or less continuously since 1976) and it was a joy to see them live once again. GG

Click to see our Bad Manners photos