THE amount of praise heaped on these outrageous imposters now probably exceeds the total tonnage of women’s lingerie hurled at the genuine article during their heyday.

Who would have thought back then that a musically primitive outfit from south London would go on to become national treasures, as British as roast beef, warm keg beer and rain-drenched holidays at the seaside?

Half a century on from those sweaty nights at Richmond’s Crawdaddy Club, the Counterfeits skilfully tap into our innate love of the perennial bad boy, delivering a carefully structured act that is at the same time both irreverent and reverent.

For this fabulous show is basically one enormous Mickey-take - with a great deal of love, it must be said - as these pretend-rebels sit at the feet of those whose legs they are about to pull.

The playing order is never really in doubt… this is a journey through the past, starkly as well as darkly.

So it’s in with a bang, the snare drum intro and overdriven valve amp explosion of Bobby Troup’s great hymn to the road Route 66 starting the proceedings.

With the motor still running, this seamlessly segues into the Rolling Stones’ first big hits, dramatically reproduced with Bobby Womack’s It’s All Over Now and The Last Time.

Amazingly, the Counterfeits manage to accurately recreate the sound technology of each era. So we emerge from smoky dives and AC 30s into the Marshall stack world of stadiums, the open tuning chords of Brown Sugar and Start Me Up assaulting your senses like having Keith Richards’ Cuban-heeled boot in your face.

But perhaps the most appropriate and strangely prophetic number of the night must have been Buddy Holly’s Not Fade Away, the boys remaining faithful to the Stones’ original Bo Diddley treatment.

In fact, these three words sum it all up… for imitators and the flattered imitated alike.