AFTER 10 years away from live performances, Steve Coogan is back.

His strength has always been creating characters that exist with a certain melancholy, ones for whom life has slightly passed them by.

On the first of two nights in Blackburn we got Paul and Pauline Calf, faded roadie Tommy Saxondale and Duncan Thicket.

All the characters got their own slots in the first half and there were some genuinely funny moments.

But the show at that stage was a little stilted. Coogan-less sketches as he changed characters were little more than student review standard and it was all a bit hit and miss, in spite of a live band and impressive staging.

But come the second half and it was Alan Partridge to the rescue.

Now a life coach rather than a radio or TV presenter, Coogan seemed to be more at home in his ‘smart casual’ baseball jacket than with any other character.

We even got a Morecambe and WIse-style play “what Alan wrote” about the life of Thomas More which was much better than it sounds.

And Coogan saved the best till last with a brave and challenging finale which Monty Python would have approved of.

Anyone who went will be singing the song all the way home.

There was a lot of goodwill along the way but Coogan did enough on his return to keep his legion of fans happy.