Dominik Diamond at the Loading Bar in Stoke Newington

DOMINIK Diamond stormed out on stage at the Loading Bar in Stoke Newington last Tuesday night to Robbie Williams’ Let Me Entertain You.

The host of the legendary video games 1990s show Games Master, now 53-years-old and living in Canada, was singing satirical songs he has written about the inner turmoil of classic characters like PacMan and Mario.

It was a nostalgia-rich and tongue-in-cheek evening thoroughly enjoyed by a generation who appeared to have somewhat let themselves go since their glory days of button-mashing youth.

One of Mr Diamond’s anecdotes – about the coveted golden joystick prize given out to the young Games Master competition winners – perhaps best captured the middle-aged mood of the night.

“When we did the Games Master book a few years ago we wanted someone to do a foreword,” he said.

Robbie Williams on the show in the 1990s

“Robbie [Williams] had been on the show and we got on well. I wrote a speculative email to his agent, saying essentially ‘trust me I was a huge fan in the 1990s’. Would he do it? I woke up the next morning and there was an email from Rob W. ‘Nice to E-see you – will this do?’, it said. ‘The joystick generally caused the most joy for me. I never put any awards up in my house, they are in the garage. The joystick, however, stayed in every house that I have ever lived in’.”

Mr Diamond said Robbie continued on about his four children and the pressures of parenthood, adding that he had “gone very thin on top”. He told the audience: “And then I spent a wonderful morning sharing emails about gardening with Robbie Williams.”

Gamesmaster, which ran for seven seasons in the 1990s, saw teenagers in baggy clothes compete against each other in video games from giants like Sega and Nintendo for the coveted golden joystick prizes.

It was set in weird and often dimly-lit venues, including the historic Clerkenwell House of Detention former prison.

Before the show Mr Diamond told Tribune: “I think we are all fairly in agreement that the internet is the worst possible thing that has happened to humanity.

“It is just horrific in terms of the bullying and the propagation of misinformation alone. It is an electronic cancer, the likes of which we have never seen, that has become a necessary evil unfortunately.

“It is why we remember the 1990s era – the music, games and TV – with such fondness.

“There is this whole generation out there who didn’t necessarily have happy childhoods. They got bullied and they were nerds.

Dominik in 1992

“And then all of a sudden there was Dominik Diamond, who was a nerd, who was getting three million viewers on TV and hanging out with models and the rest of it.

“They were like, ‘do you know what? Bollocks to the jocks, we’re actually cool ourselves’.

“And they formed friendships and got through it all. Even though people are in their 30s and 40s now, people look back on that and that’s what they remember.”

One of Mr Diamond’s super niche songs is about a world- weary Altered Beast, pleading not to be resurrected in yet another “extra life”.

Mr Diamond said: “It is a horrific thing to imagine, to be brought back again and again, against your will, to get battered, stabbed, shot, falling down holes in platforms and so on. What if you are one of these characters who is like, ‘no more give me peace, I am exhausted’.”

Mr Diamond recalled some of the show’s more peculiar skits, including one with the World Wrestling Federation superstar Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and another featuring the weatherman Michael Fish playing a game called Prop Cycle where you had to “cycle a bike through the sky and burst balloons”.

Sir Patrick Moore as The Gamesmaster

“That was when I realised how much marijuana and acid was being taken by game programmers,” Mr Diamond said.

The baffling ToeJam & Earl on the SEGA Megadrive where you “really didn’t have any idea what was going on” was an “example of how video games had gotten to such a popular level that they could take artistic risks”, he said.

“Without sounding too pretentious, I think video games should be treated as an art form as valid as cinema, painting and sculpture. I think that because of games like ToeJam & Earl.

“There was another game I remember called Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor on the Gameboy Advance.

“It was all about heaven and hell, but done in a really intellectual way.

“The level of imagination that was involved in some of those games was incredible. So surreal, and also political. It opened me up to Japanese culture.”

Mr Diamond temporarily quit Gamesmaster after Series 2 over a dispute about the show’s sponsor, McDonalds.

‘Dominik Diamond Sings the Video Games’ is expected to go on a nationwide tour next year.