The great darts commentator Sid Waddell once said, referring with exquisite hyperbole to the Crafty Cockney Eric Bristow, ‘When Alexander of Macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer.’ The same fate has befallen world-famous pop star Ian Lockwood, or at least the monstrous version of Ian Lockwood presented this evening. Every hurdle has been cleared. Every mountain scaled. Every enemy vanquished. What’s left but a live onstage (and contractually obliged) suicide?

If that sounds strangely disturbing, that kind of sums up Lockwood’s approach; sweet pop nuggets with broken glass hiding in the centre. Cheerily risque anthems papering over a howling existential void. It’s a deceptively ambitious show. ‘The Farewell Tour’ is, by Lockwood’s own estimation something of a Greatest Hits from the five years he’s been performing musical comedy. Yet he’s not content to simply present the songs. Instead, he’s crafted his own mini-Divine Comedy, split into three segments of Heaven, Hell, and Earth (including appropriate costume changes) with the songs providing the narrative heft.

For the most part, the songs are a pitch-perfect hyper-sexualised spin on modern pop, sung with gusto and danced with frenzied suggestiveness by the energetic singer. ‘Nasty’ is a bouncy and mean-spirited statement of intent. ‘No Homo’ is The Lonely Island‘s ‘Equal Rights’ with even less plausible deniability. ‘Your Dad’ starts as a queer R&B version of ‘Stacy’s Mom’ before becoming a twisted kidnapping fantasy. And did you know that Mermen can be hideously bigoted towards dolphins?

‘The Farewell Tour’ has a surprisingly coherent narrative given it’s essentially a scaffolding around pre-existing songs. It’s slickly performed with just enough of the rough edges visible to add an extra ironic dimension to the idea we’re watching the last decadent day of the world’s biggest pop star. Lockwood even glides merrily past some minor mic issues. The intimate scale of the venue means he is still entirely audible, and he is also more than deft enough to milk the poor tech guy’s valiant onstage efforts for a few extra comic moments.

Not all the songs are perfect earworms however, and these coincide with the greatest moments of drama as Lockwood wrestles with self-doubt, presented between songs as the increasingly snippy singer superimposed into an interview conducted by the late Barbara Walters. Here the show spins its wheels a little, with an acoustic ballad draining some of the energy when it should be reaching a crescendo.

However, ‘The Farewell Tour’ finds its feet again with a twisted ending that should in theory hit the heights of epiphany as Lockwood reaches self-actualisation. This being the stage Ian Lockwood however, he tempers this moment of catharsis by resolving to continue being as big an arsehole as he always was, daring the audience to read a triumphant, upbeat ending into it. A tad uneven in places, but mainly going down a treat with the young audience that will predominantly be Lockwood’s demographic. This evening also had one of those lovely one-off Fringe moments, with all the cast-off costumes hurled into the crowd in the direction of Luke Rollason, until the Extraordinary star resembled a cricket umpire in a burlesque club. Lockwood rounds off with an encore of what he himself considers his best song, ‘Orbo‘, the jaunty ode to existential terror. Lovely stuff.

‘The Farewell Tour‘ is at Underbelly George Square – The Wee Coo until Mon 26 Aug 2014 (except Mon 12) at 22:20