DESPITE picking up a New Year OBE, the great Richard Thompson returned to Nottingham unchanged in all the essentials – he's one of Britain's greatest song-writers and guitar players and he's still wearing that black beret.

And after a string of so-so studio albums it sounds as if he's finally got his mojo back with the new album Dream Attic, most of which was performed last night with a new full electric band in a show divided cleanly between old and new material.

For all Thompson's incomparable folk-rock pedigree, which stretches back to the 1960s and Fairport Convention, this was a potentially risky way of organising operations since even mature audiences sporting grey ponytails and glasses of red wine want to hear something familiar.

In the event, they got the Thompson they came for, although there were some dicey moment in the first 'Dream Attic' half such as when Thompson followed his trademark exuberant swirling folk-rock with yet another song about death.

But after that, what would the second half bring? Thompson immediately dived deep into the back catalogue with The Angels Took My Racehorse Away from his 1972 debut and then came forward to the 1980s with the bitter Can't Win ("if we can't have it/why should a wretch like you?").

Here, Thompson tried to shatter the polite consensus which can only exist at a gig where you have to be seated by putting in an astounding white-hot ten minute guitar solo, running his fingers to the screaming end of the fret board and bending strings with inhuman skill.

It went on and on and if he had played nothing else all evening this would have been a great night out.

Oh Lord, please save Richard Thompson's fingers from harm and arthritis, amen.

Mark Patterson