IT’S only mock and role but we like it. Yes, batten down the hatches and lock up your grandmothers… those preposterous, posturing imposters of pop are back in town.

Dick Dagger, Bill Hymen - all right, we won’t list the whole lot, you’ve got the picture. Maybe just imagine that iconic lips logo only with the tongue now placed very firmly in cheek and that will give you some idea of what to expect with this show.

So it’s curtain up. Dick Dagger swaggers onstage, an all-twitching parody of androgyny, slurring his words with a phoney London cum Mississippi sharecropper’s accent.

And to be sure, it’s a dead-ringer for the real thing, an inarticulate blues babble that transforms the moronic into an art form. Bobby Troupe’s Route 66, It’s All Over Now, The Last Time… 1964 post-war provincial English streets become Chicago or Selmer, Alabama, in the time it takes to flick the switch on an AC 30 valve amp.

A bit of banter with the crowd, and the focus shifts to the Brian Jones character. A swimming pool gag – ouch - is dropped in and almost sinks to the bottom but it doesn’t matter.

For all eyes are now on the blond god that was the Golden Stone, a style king who in the early days had so effortlessly placed Keith Richards in the shade.

Of course, his star is doomed to burn brilliantly bright then fall to earth and others will take his place. However, into this temporary vacuum steps the great pretender, the undisputed riff-meister, grand vizier of riffs… enter Keef the main man.

Mother’s Little Helper, Gimme Shelter, Honky Tonk Women, Brown Sugar, Start Me Up… yes, they’re all spot on, every intro and solo note-for-note perfect.

And all the while, we behold the delicious absurdity of Dick Dagger as he lurches and leers, a St Vitus dance of spasm following spasm, camper than a row of tents… Steve Elson’s magnificent and at times deceptively moving elegy to the Rolling Stones is more than an affectionate glance over the shoulder - and most certainly not just the case of yet another tribute band going through the motions.

No. For this is a keenly-observed narrative that documents an extraordinary, yet short period during the last century when the shadows of war had been banished and youth finally freed from the shackles that had burdened previous generations.

In fact, there’s nothing really counterfeit about these Stones at all. Maybe not exactly the real deal… but you’d never know it.