This may seem a strong accolade for someone who last wrote an original song around forty years ago, but seeing him move through the Jazz Café, hunched below a black hat, with slow shuffle steps, the power of his myth clearly enveloped and energised all and sundry –- from baby-boomers to those who were born when even the Stones were old-hat.

Moving up on to the stage, and having been handed his old trademark rectangular guitar, Bo kicked off with his signature hypnotic beat, what he once called 'that freight train sound'. His old fingers fumbled and seemed lost on the fretboard of his guitar, but his voice was as warm and thick as the earliest recordings. His patchy guitar was even able to flourish given the accommodating and superbly tight backing of his band. All bar one stemming from New York, the band included two women: bandleader Debby Hastings on bass and backing vocals and Margo Lewis on Hammond, keys, and the maracas. It has long been Bo's preference to have women musicians, and this provided a needed feminine contrast on stage, not often seen in the Blues myth-kitty.

Not a man to fight shy of self-promotion, ('Bo Diddley' crops up amply in the titles of his songs) one of the highlights of the evening was a song all about the good and great that Bo has been with on stage. The list was long: 'Brother James Brown, Brother B.B King, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry!' 'I've been with the greatest,' his smooth voice sang, and despite the simple soul accompaniment of the band, and the not too sparkling melody, Bo managed to rescue the song by sheer force of character alone. This, however, was not so robust as perhaps he thought it was, and nearly fell apart when he did a take on rap, which was dilute to say the least. Despite saying that he had learnt rap from his mother when he was a child, this being the early 40s mind, the song felt more like a case of hasty appropriation, a bandwagon Bo didn't really need to jump onto, rather than a genuine passion. Swapping macho tales about 'going all day and night', 'not getting enough of your stuff' and such from Blues seemed out of place in his rap.

The old classics such as 'I'm a Roadrunner' and 'Who do you love' lived up to their promise, but it was 'I'm a man' that was the highlight of the evening, as fresh as it was nearly fifty years ago. Bo hit his guitar and fiddled with his tremolo and fuzzy effects, plucking out simple wavy warbling notes, sounds which inspired Hendrix at the cusp of the sixties. And whilst they have lost their futuristic tinge now, the sheer rhythmic persuasiveness and crafty simplicity they embodied were a respite from the wall-of-sound guitar or finger-quick solos you hear often. But the voice and attitude stirred most, and it was strangely liberating to hear a man who wasn't ashamed to sing about being a man in the old Blues style, a freewheeling spirit, or as he would put it a 'hell of a man'.

Of course, the modern man should treat this with a certain derision, this image that the mass market has provided for us: the cliché of the Bluesman. But it is a testament to his art that his music can move outside this framework, and be genuinely moving. For these reasons this man should be treasured for as long as he keeps going for, and after that for longer.