Humour dates fast, so it’s tough out there to stay at the top with a career as a musical comic. Weird Al Yankovic’s ability to lampoon the hits of the day over four decades has led to parody gems like ‘Amish Paradise’ and ‘White And Nerdy’, both of which are included as part of his encore medley at the end of The Unfortunate Return Of The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour.

But there’s a reason that this touring show is not called Weird Al Plays The YouTube Hits You’re Already Word Perfect On While The Crowd Drown Him Out. Such an event would require many, many backing tapes to mimic everything from Madonna to Meat Loaf. Weird Al, as the accordion/polka world already knows, is a proper musician, and so are each of his band as they prove while playing a selection of favourites for fans in this intimate show.  

^{Live pictures: Kamal Asar}

After a warm-up from the legend that is the equally off-kilter Emo Philips, Weird Al takes to the stage to the strains of Carl Orff’s ‘Carmina Burana’: an appropriately understated entrance for a show that highlights the craft of the humble comedy song: ‘Your Horoscope For Today’ from 1999’s Running With Scissors is a prime example of that craft. Tone-setting openers include ‘Lame Claim To Fame’, ‘Young, Dumb & Ugly’ and ‘My Baby’s In Love With Eddie Vedder’. Al has been parodying music for decades, so there’s also specific parodies of REM (the melodic ‘Frank’s 2000” TV’) and the palindromic word-smithery of Bob Dylan (‘Bob’) plus a skewering of the shambling pretentions of The Doors, with Al mirroring Jim Morrison in cop-baiting provocateur mode ‘Mother…I want to wrap you…in the Turin Shroud!’

Still sporting the hirsute mane of a Restoration composer and the stern countenance of a Dickensian character, Al exits like a beast with his monumental, semi-autobiographical mega-song ‘Albuquerque’ closing the show. While he’s professionally inserted the kind of local colour required for comprehension by a Scottish audience (Irn-Bru, haggis, Argyle Street), Al hasn’t watered down his American pop-culture patter. A reference to Pauly Shore’s movie Bio-Dome is lapped up, although it’s asking a lot of a UK audience’s cultural knowledge when the exuberant punchline of a joke is gleefully shouting the name ‘Charles Nelson Reilly!’ 

One song that’s weathered particularly well is ‘Skipper Dan’, inspired by a failed actor that Al once saw playing the title role in an aquatic Disney theme-park boat ride. His enthusiasm for the pathos of this subject is understandable; while Skipper Dan trots through the same jokes for his aging audience, Weird Al is exuberantly living the dream of the great American comedy singer-songwriter.

Weird Al Yankovic: The Unfortunate Return Of The Ridiculously Self-Indulgent, Ill-Advised Vanity Tour, O2 Academy Birmingham, Tuesday 14 February, London Palladium, Thursday 16 February; reviewed at O2 Academy Glasgow.