CONGRATULATIONS on being the smallest audience on our tour, said crime writer Mark Billingham, aware of Saturday night's counter attractions.

He did not mention England's rugger debacle against the Aussies, but any sense of loss and pain being experienced at Twickenham's parallel world that night would have chimed with Billingham's love of those qualities in the narrative-driven country noir music of Michael Weston King and Lou Dalgleish, alias My Darling Clementine.

Billingham featured their work in his playlist in his latest novel, The Bones Beneath, and courted them to join him in a stage project, for which he has written a story in response to assorted Clementine numbers, among them The Other Half.

An assured performer from his acting and stand-up comedy days, Billingham span his episodic yarn of Las Vegas showgirl Marcia's single doomed shot at happiness with deadpan delight from behind a lectern.

Dalgleish, in her off-the-peg bridal dress, and Weston King, all sideburns and heartburn, would either accompany him or unveil another of their guitar and keyboard songs of damaged love, played out as characters from Billingham's nefarious world.

It all worked like the best page-turners on dark nights, before an encore trio of George Jones covers and a singalong finale of Heartaches By The Number, with Billingham on guitar and vocals, sent the select audience home happier than any of those songs.