Overheard in the queue: “I saw him once before, supporting Air, but I can't remember a thing about it.” Such vagueness might be understandable when it comes to the majority of British bands. In the case of Sébastien Tellier (pictured), you'd think that our venues were overrun with hirsute, eccentric practitioners of Gallic perv-pop. After an hour in the company of 32-year-old Tellier, you rather wished they were.

At this packed show, he wasted no time addressing the most pressing matter. Next month, Tellier will represent France in the Eurovision Song Contest with his new single, Divine. By way of introduction, he made his hands into a pair of rabbit ears and declaimed: “Eurovision!” As the tune worked its robotic bubblegum magic on the room, he soloed on an invisible keyboard and pondered the controversy in France that forced him to re-record the song with French lyrics.

“What time is it?” he inquired a few minutes later. “It may be time to go to the party next door with the prostitution. It's not a crime for me. I'm an artist.”

When he's not being an agent provocateur, he sings songs - in particular those from his new album Sexuality - that were fated to be played at Agent Provocateur: the glacial, seductive portent mapped out in the chords of Roche; the synths and computerised claps of Pomme.

The influence of Serge Gainsbourg hovered over every move like a frilly lace airship - not the Sixties Serge, but the Serge of Lemon Incest from 1984, conferring an ambience of synthetic unreality upon the most intimate subject matter. Tellier's band also seemed to have been beamed in from some obscure European 1980s pop show, in particular a keyboard player with the brown leather jacket and collar partially upturned that was mandatory for all session musicians between 1982 and 1988.

This was an aesthetic microclimate in which many of the usual insults had no currency. For Une Heure waves of quasi-classical keyboards called to mind a support group for fans of Jacques Loussier - and it sounded thrilling. Yes it was cheesy, but then few sensory experiences compare to a fine French cheese. And, oscillating between a solo Tellier on the piano and a full band wig-out, an extended version of Tellier's club smash La Ritournelle chauffeured the point home in style.

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