I picked up Depeche Mode’s 101 rockumentary/live show video at the market at the weekend. Looking forward to seeing Dave Gahan crooning Gore’s songs of doubt and domination in an atmosphere of soft reds and harsh white lights, a devoted audience singing along with every word of the sombre songs.

So far so good as Gahan did that deep warbling thing he does throughout the verses about failed teen suicide. But then out of nowhere he starts punctuating the gaps between the verses with howls of “Yeah!” and “Come on!”. I was utterly aghast, Dave’s onstage behaviour is totally unacceptable. He’s standing there spinning on the spot with the mic stand held out Freddie Mercury style in the middle of “Blasphemous Rumours”. Where’s the gravitas? He’s roaring all over the bloody song.

I was prepared to let the tight white denims, matching vest and studded black leather slide without comment but he’s annoyed me now. He looks like someone’s precocious little brother at a school hall disco trying to look like Faith era George Michael. Anyone who looks sillier onstage that Martin “I’m kinky I am ” Gore is really pushing his luck.

Add to this my disbelief and mild horror at seeing a crowd filled with the extras from the set of The Breakfast Club; tanned permed stereotypical beautiful people in a sea of high school nerds. Where were the Goths? Where were my comrades in bondage gear? The disaffected? The only people I knew who liked DM back in the days of Black Celebration and Music for the Masses were the oddballs like me. You mean they were a global phenomenon all along? Bollocks.

But the question remains, can there be a more inappropriate front man?

(P.S. Well Done Dizzee)