There is a frustrated musician in most of us and from time to time a musically unconventional album is so commercially successful that we think we too can have a chance of hitting the big time. I’m currently working on cover versions of Jay Z’s track 99 problems and All the girls standing in the line for the Bathroom by N.E.R.D. I’ve got a hunch that tunelessly barking them out arhythmically in a Belfast accent could be commercial gold. Like so many of my best ideas this one came to me after half a bottle of wine and three pints. Mrs Mac is as unsupportive as she is unpersuaded.

Radiohead’s In Rainbows is the inspiration for this project. It disregards a lot of the rules of songwriting, to the limited extent that I understand them, and has confirmed the band as probably the most challenging and innovative mainstream group in Britain.

Tonight’s show was the first of two in Victoria Park and the ten minute journey time suited me down to the ground. The downside was that some coked-up, braying arseholes from the City found it equally convenient and on a couple of occasions they drowned out the music. The lighting rig would have made a perfect gallows.

Thom Yorke is not the world’s chattiest frontman. He did try to get a chant of “free Tibet” going for no obvious reason. Near the end of the set he admitted that he’d been “f**king terrified” before going onstage.  That was pretty much his banter for the evening. John Cale once remarked “they say fear is a man’s best friend”.  That might be true because Yorke’s performance was superlative – nervy, angsty and dynamic. This was despite, or because, the band eschewed a rabble rousing, crowd pleasing set, opting instead for a much more sonically adventurous selection drawing heavily on the recent album. More than once tonight, but particularly listening to the reworking of Everything in its right place only an idiot with severe hearing loss would not have recognised that they were in the presence of one of the greatest bands to come out of Britain in the last forty years. Many of the rhythms owe a debt to drum and bass, there are borrowings from electronica and grunge all combining to produce a unique, sublime confrontational noise.

Radiohead  last played Victoria Park eight or nine years ago and my recollection is that it was underwhelming. Tonight by contrast was a little bit of genius by an uncompromising band.