Review | Show of Hands Full Circle farewell tour at New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth: 'They will be sorely missed'

But Steve Knightley and Phil Beer have called time on their band and are seeing it off with one final, mammoth 75 date tour, dubbed Full Circle. Without their long-time foil Miranda Sykes on bass, or more recent addition percussionist Cormac Byrne, this tour features just the original duo.

For this show, they’re playing two hour-long sets which feature a few surprises alongside some of their best known songs.

The New Theatre Royal is a familiar space for the duo – they were the first musical act to play here when it reopened in 2015 after an extensive refurb, and Knightley has said it is one of his favourite venues.

While they call Devon home, they know this part of the world well and the set is peppered with local references – even Mick’s Monster Burgers get a look in.

Both gents are in chatty form, adding background to the songs and asides (Beer’s theory on how the Devonians stopped the Romans’ advance across the River Exe is… intriguing).

We also get to hear about how life on the road has changed with fans more likely to ply them with homemade preserves than booze or drugs these days – so much so that they joke about setting up their own farm shop, Show of Hams after the tour.

But of course, it’s the music that’s sold this show out.

Country Life was one of the first songs to bring them to wider attention, and it remains an indelible anthem, brimming with righteous anger about the destruction of rural life by gentrification and big business.

We also get to hear a brace of ‘firsts’ – Beer plays a solo Sally, which was the first song he ever learned to play, from Davey Graham’s 1965 classic Folk, Blues and Beyond. And then we get the first song Knightley ever wrote as a callow teenager – a Bob Dylan pastiche, he plays it for laughs getting the audience to guess the (mostly) obvious words at the end of each line.

There are also more recent numbers – You'll Get By, which took on new life during the pandemic, and Best One Yet, given here a more folky arrangement than its widescreen, festival-friendly recorded version, and is spliced with Here Comes The Sun and I Can See Clearly Now.

(A Black Night in) Yeovil Town is a comedically country take on a bad gig with events taking an even worse turn afterwards.

Santiago was a formative song from early in their career – created with exiled Chilean musicians who’d fled the Pinochet regime, it is still a powerful piece that resonates. It is prefaced with an impassioned denunciation of “cultural appropriation” from Knightley – without collaboration and cross-cultural exchanges, how can music grow and flourish across borders?

They ‘finish’ with the rousing Cousin Jack, but of course they’re called back for an encore – a new(ish) song, The Ride, about a fairground operator weathering tough times which can be read as a metaphor for the state of live music.

It’s a worthy finish to a night that’s neatly encapsulated their musical journey down the decades.

Both musicians already have projects lined up for after this tour finishes, but Show of Hands’ demise will leave a huge hole in the scene. They will be sorely missed.