Half an hour into the musical extravaganza at Margate’s Dreamland on Saturday, and things are, to put it mildly, a trifle odd.

I find myself stood next to a bloke dressed, head to toe, as peak ‘you cannot be serious’ John McEnroe, and a chap in a full Ghostbusters outfit. In the distance, I can see a chap wearing a Freddie Mercury outfit - but with no moustache.

Meanwhile, on the stage, a Chas & Dave tribute act are performing a rendition of the Only Fools and Horses theme song.

I have not consumed any hallucinatory drugs.

This, good people of Kent, is simply the amuse-bouche to the first seaside outing of Rewind - the long-established kings of the 1980s revival show. And what a ride we are about to have.

For us southerners, Rewind is better known for its weekend-long festival held at Henley-on-Thames. This one-dayer in Margate is something of a scaled-down test event for what many of the audience hope will become an annual knees-up.

And judging by the size of the crowd here, it will have ticked plenty of boxes for the organisers; if it’s not sold-out it is within a whisker of doing so.

Better still, the thunderstorms which were threatened this weekend rolled in and out overnight - the skies are blue, the sun warm, not baking, and Dreamland looks rather splendid. All the pre-show hype had talked of sun-kissed Margate…remarkably, it got it.

Compered by The Doctor - as in of ‘and the Medics’ fame, he performs his number one hit Spirit in the Sky as the day continues - the mood is, therefore, good. The crowd wanting to be entertained.

Making your way through the audience - who have arrived en masse for the opening Chas & Dave tribute act Gertcha (primarily, one imagines, so it can start with a faithful rendition of Margate) - there are plenty of Choose Life shirts, a handful of Frankie Say slogans and lots and lots of day-glo garments being worn by an audience - and I count myself among this number - for whom their 50th birthday is fast disappearing in the rear view mirror.

But where Rewind has proved such a success before, it is due to the willingness of the crowd to embrace their youth - to dance and sing and dress-up. A couple of pints in and its hard not to be intoxicated by the rather magical atmosphere it creates.

It also operates on a very strict ‘all hits, no filler’ approach - the acts come on, play the songs we all remember, and then are replaced with remarkable haste. In some cases we are talking literally minutes as a house band means there’s no tuning up between sets required.

As Midge Ure comments - “this is not the sort of show when someone comes on stage and says here’s something new”.

Talking of whom, he is, arguably, the stand-out performer of the day.

He is, gulp, now 71. But you would never know that from his voice which remains exactly as you remember it. His six-song set gives us everything from Fade to Grey from his days in Visage to Ultravox hits such as Vienna - what a song that is - to Dancing With Tears in Your Eyes to his solo number one If I Was. It is easy to overlook what a talent this man is.

He follows Nik Kershaw - who has also aged well and delivers a five-song set featuring his biggest hits. Wouldn’t It Be Good, I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Wide Boy, The Riddle and the jumbo hit he penned for Chesney Hawkes - The One and Only. He has, as they say, still got it.

And to complete a trio of acts who all had performed at Wembley Stadium at Live Aid (40 years ago next month) is headliner Tony Hadley.

The Spandau Ballet frontman looks the part in blue jacket and rounds the show out - coming on with To Cut A Long Story Short before powering through all the songs you would expect from his back catalogue, including monster hits True and Gold.

Earlier, we’d had T’Pau demonstrating that Carol Decker’s voice is still a force to be reckoned with and getting the first really big reaction as she rounded off her set inevitably, with monster hit China In Your Hand.

Toyah, a woman whose general celebrity today often disguises the fact she was a punk act back in the day, performed like an absolute pro. Full of energy and arriving on stage by telling us she was “so in love with Margate and Dreamland” she rattled through some covers - Martha & The Muffins’ Echo Beach and Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell - before her own It’s A Mystery and I Want To Be Free.

Heaven 17 are a polished act too and they captured the imagination first with hit (We Don’t Need) This Facist Groove Thang before a cover of David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and a stupendous, extended, Temptation; one of the highlights of the day.

The day’s main acts had started with Tiffany. Remember her? Of course you do, she made her name by singing in American shopping malls - introducing the word ‘malls’ to many of us in the process - and getting a global chart-topper, I Think We’re Alone Now, for her efforts. She was a mere 16 when it was number one. She’s 53 now.

None of us are any younger.

Rewind is a remarkable beast and its debut in Margate was a fun event - tightly choreographed and covering a broad spectrum of tastes. If the line-up was perhaps not as stellar as its Henley shindig, it once again proved to be greater than the sum of its parts.

I will not be alone in hoping it returns next summer.