YES, you could have stayed in and got all hot and bothered about the Great British Bake Off.

Yes, you could have umm-ed, ahh-ed and cha-cha-cha’d about the latest Strictly contestant, and, yes, you could have expostulated about Simon Cowell’s vision for this year’s X Factor.

Or you could have joined the 699 – just one off capacity - tsoaking tsouls tsurfing a tsumani of tsweat, tsnot and tcider at the Ocean Rooms for punk rock iconoclasts The Damned and got yourself a FLIPPING LIFE.

“Hello Weymouth, my name is Captain Sensible, and I’ve just had a cream tea,” announced the man himself, wearing his signature red beret and zipped-up tartan bondage trews, before strangling seven shades of shizzle out of his cherry red SG with the opening chords of Love Song.

Undead singer Dave Vanian, immaculate in black leather biker jacket, black leather gloves, black t-shirt, black strides, black Cuban heels, black greased-back hair and black shades, howled and prowled like an on-heat panther as they crashed into I Just Can’t Be Happy Today, one of their biggest hits.

And BOOM, these are no three-chord wonders as the vintage rockers tore through a set of punk, prog, psychedelia and pure panto with exceptional musicianship and stage nous, much to the delight of the heaving crowd, many of whom were sporting the latest punk trend of reverse Mohicans, or bald patches, as some like to call them.

A nod to their pre-punk roots with their take on Love’s Alone Again Or… plus an epic Eloise and BASH, into a finale of tracks from their epoch-defining ‘77 debut Damned Damned Damned.

New Rose was as violent and vital as it was nearly 40 years ago but Neat Neat Neat was marred, for me anyway, by an extended instrumental twiddle, surely the musical equivalent of having a poo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: A great achievement, mate, but not something anyone would want to watch or listen to.

A thoroughly warranted encore of Fan Club - “ Wanna see more of me, see me after the show,” Vanian teases - before dedicating their last song, Smash It Up, to the aforementioned Cowell , and it’s BOSH, out into a rainy Thursday night.

Punk’s not dead, it may whiff a bit, but there’s still magic in this abra-cadavre