Judged by the company he keeps, Robyn Hitchcock should be regarded highly indeed. This time last year, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe from R.E.M. turned up at the Oxford Zodiac to play with him. Out of the blue? Apparently, but since R.E.M’s guitarist, Peter Buck, was moonlighting for Hitchcock’s Venus 3, it wasn’t so implausible. The folk-rocking Soft Boys, Hitchcock’s initial outfit, formed in Cambridge in the teeth of the punk era, had influenced early R.E.M.

By his own estimation, Hitchcock is now a “superannuated cult dude”. Famous friends haven’t brought him big sales, but there was a five-disc box-set to flog in the foyer. I Wanna Go Backwards captures his resilient wit and floral-shirted convictions during a 1980s spent filtering the Beatles, Syd Barrett and Bert Jansch. Tonight, the 55-year-old was offering “the director’s cut” of 1984’s I Often Dream of Trains.