Covid-19 has gone, right? So it must be OK to see bands in pubs again?

That’s all the excuse I needed to watch one of my favourite Swale groups, Marylebone Jelly, performing at The Harps at Minster on the sun-kissed Isle of Sheppey.

It was a tad busy when I arrived so I spent the first few minutes like a Peeping Tom watching and listening through a window from the car park. The band were playing one of their favourites, Don't Look Back In Anger from Oasis, and the crowd was loving it.

So I plucked up courage and went inside. It was packed with what looked like two parties on the go, a 20th and hen-do judging by a giant inflatable organ (the male kind, not the one Dave Boulden was playing on stage) floating over people’s heads.

All the party revellers seemed to be crammed onto the dance floor so I decided to watch from a safe distance at the back, still clad in my coat, all very rock ‘n’ roll.

The band is celebrating its 25th year with the Ed Austin on vocals, the Animal-like Neil Ranger on drums, music teacher Louis Newell on guitar and relative new-boy Chris ‘Riggo’ Payne on bass. He replaced Saul Watson in 2019.

Marylebone Jelly, or MJB to friends, are one of the tightest and busiest on the circuit and never take any prisoners. It’s full-on entertainment from the moment the Jelly boys pick up their instruments.

Don’t expect a lot of talking between numbers, or even a comfort break half-way through to recharge your glasses, because you won’t get it. At the very least, you are going to get two-and-a-half hours of non-stop music, possibly more. It's a bit like a live disco.

“Why not?” asked Ed. “Playing live is the best bit of being in a band.”

He insists there is no set list but he calls the numbers as he sees fit, keeping an eye on the crowd the whole time.

It was charismatic Ed, a project manager for KCC, who first teamed up with drummer and former postman Neil. The pair were at Sittingbourne's St John’s school together and then switched to Borden Grammar where they ended up in pub rock band Parallel with keyboard wizard and self-employed businessman Dave.

Ed said: “That band split but the three of us decided to carry on. We wanted to cover a wider range. We wanted songs to get people dancing and put smiles on faces. For us, it has always been about the show.”

Their enthusiasm is infectious as they bash out all the ‘bangers’, as younger people now call floor-fillers. So expect everything you might put onto a party mix-tape.

They spat out Queen numbers, a few Stones' classics, Bon Jovi’s Living On A Prayer, with Louis making weird noises through a vocoder tube, Teenage Dirtbag, of course, featuring guest vocals from the birthday girl, Footloose, Uptown Funk, Chelsea Dagger, Sex on Fire, a new working of Paradise, and Mr Brightside – cue a sea of selfies and a forest of hands in the air.

They hate stopping. They are the musical equivalent of the late Ken Dodd who loved being on stage so much he would often carry on long after the last buses had left, stranding audiences at theatres up and down the country.

They’re not normally a jeans and T-shirt band, either. They are smartly turned out, Ed wearing a jacket, and they smile a lot. They also believe the audience should see them so they are well lit with ‘moving heads’ and LED floodlights; even the mic stand lights up. The Yamaha sound system knocks spots off just about everything else.

The name, by the way, is a cross between the old dog-food TV commercial “enriched with marrowbone jelly” and the posh London district of Marylebone, in case you were asking.

'I love bald heads'

Just when I thought the night couldn’t get any better, one of the strangest things happened. A woman walked over and asked, out of the blue, if she could rub my head. Of all the years I’ve been reviewing bands this has never happened before.

“Why?” I asked.

“I just love bald heads,” she replied.

It took a while for the brain to digest this. If it had been the other way around I might now be facing a charge of sexual harassment. But we on Sheppey are a friendly bunch, so I agreed.

“Oo,” she purred. “That’s nice and soft. It’s proper bald. I tried one earlier and it was all bristly.”

I’m still not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or not but it cheered me up and was a nice and different end to the evening.

Covid? Oh yes, it’s still around. I tested positive on the Wednesday and am now self-isolating with a barking cough making me unable to speak. Some say it’s a massive improvement.

Bearing that in mind, I'm sticking to open-air festivals for the foreseeable future. You can catch MBJ at Groovy Fest 3 at The Woodstock, Sittingbourne, on May 21; Together Festival Mote Park, Maidstone, on June 3 and Iwade Rock on July 23. More dates here.