Can you get any more deliciously eccentric than Antony Elvin? The man who is announced as "The People’s Toff" bounds up to the microphone, Shoo-Sha-ing a hello, sporting a fencing outfit and a set including such commonly addressed rock'n'roll topics as space spiders and "one’s inability to be gay"... Beat that if you can. Lord Elvin declares a duel.

One of Curious Generation's organisers declared she was off to "find Jesus" - no doubt a reference to Elvin's white attire, shaggy hairdo and relaxed attitude toward shaving. Following up the depressive but charming indie-goth David Ryder Prangley, and thick-voiced Rosie Wilby, who couldn't sustain the crowd’s attention - even in white, Antony was a turn towards the colourful.

Perhaps the broad range of rich, Scott Walker-esque vocal tricks in his recordings created a rod for his back as he had to work a little to keep his voice in line for the performance. He found ways around the high notes, apologising politely between songs for every one he had to lower or circumvent, and at one stage musing with perfect 50s BBC diction, "Perhaps if someone brought me a hot drink, I could finish my set without bleeding to death through my throat."

The white kingfisher fought on. Duelling the throat demons (which seemed to bother him more than the audience), he simply found growls and low sighs to fill in for the high notes as he worked his way through a different kind of London, where lavish gentlemen ride around in carriages and place bets they can't back up. From camp to eccentric and back again, his songs admired Jacqueline Bisset, took the piss out of Parliament and declared him the Omega Man. Last of a kind. No argument there - probably the first of a kind, too.

He opened the floor to requests. Never anything less than modest, he responded to the first song shouted out with compliance, and the introduction, "Oh that one. I don't mind it. It's OK." Such modesty is soon proved excessive when the Elvin hands hit the strings. His talent as a guitarist leaves most of the solo strummers playing the London circuit in the dust.

But Antony's performance actually shines best as a strangely ramshackle operation. You get the idea that it's just what you tolerate in order to be in the company of someone so entirely different. Like an oddball aristocrat with the most interesting tea you’ve ever tasted - but he serves it to you out of an antelope's hoof.

The evening ended on a note of comedy, much as it began. The jaunty Englishman flounced out his best echoes of Cole Porter, the 30s-sounding 'Cheese Song' where he notes, "I know you don't like cheese." Indeed we don't. And far from it too, Lord Elvin.

Text: Heather DeLand