Pulp: 14th December 2002 - Auto Festival (live)

Ta-ra, Cocker!

Jarvis bids adieu to these shores with a suitably strange fin de siecle gig

The sign above the doorway to Pulp's almighty wake reads 'LIVING ROBOTS'. And, despite all the career connotations, they mean actual, real-life living robots that hunt each other around a gigantic padded arena and eat each other. Just as animals hunt out the most befitting place to expire, Pulp blast their last in a dark Satanic steelworks converted into an ultra sci-fi science museum. Upstairs in Airworld you can step inside an indoor tornado; downstairs in Pulpworld you can witness the final bolt from pop's most spectacular thunderstorm.

Yorkshire has come to praise Pulp, not to bury them. Whatever the reason for their fall from chart grace - whether it was the sexy-as-watercress Titchmarsh-isms of 'We Love Life' or the rise of the new raunchy revolution - tonight they celebrate their late-starter-becomes-shag-of-the-century career with a set from God's own Glastonbury. So we get dusted-off classics ('Lipgloss', 'Razzamatazz'), chest-bursting hits ('Babies', 'Sorted...') and a badgerful of fresh madnesses from Jarvis, last seen glassing himself at Meltdown. He throws peanuts over the front row before fondly-rendered B-side '59 Lyndhurst Grove'. He does ten dances at once during the cosmic wig-out of 'Sunrise'. We worship him as a clown prince of pomp-pop; the French'll just muzzle him.

Aside from a triumphant 'Happy Endings' there's no goodbye, just a reluctant au revoir. "It's the last time you'll see us for a bit," says Jarvis, lingering in the spotlight a few seconds after 'Common People' has out-blown the tornado, "but we may meet again, who knows?" A downright tragedy if we don't, but if their headstone must be planted here, let it read: Here Lie Pulp, Too Fabulous To Live. We Can See Up Your Skirt From Here. Uhh.

Mark Beaumont