Yihao is a disaffected 20 year old living in Chengdu, capital of Sichaun Province. A thriving centre for business and commerce, Chengdu looks like any other modern city. You could mistake it for downtown Chicago except that, apart from the Walmart logo, the signage is in Chinese.

In October 1977 Glasgow punk band Johnny & the Self Abusers decided to change their name. This was a problem for Chiswick Records, who were about to release their debut single. The records were pressed, the sleeves printed and the press release issued. There was no time to recall any of it and alter the band’s name. The single was credited to Johnny & the Self Abusers.

I’m struck by how many of my 2022 picks deal with relationships in extremis: a love story disguised as a Hitchcockian murder mystery, a long friendship gone suddenly surreally awry, an unlikely romance that unfolds on a sub-zero train journey, a married couple whose shared obsession with mortality is piqued by a toxic dust cloud, a father-daughter bond that’s finally understood through the prism of bitter-sweet memory.

Watching Bowie for the only time in what turned out to be his last tour in 2003, I wanted glamour and mystique, Ziggy preserved. Instead here was ordinary bloke Dave, badly dressed in faded jeans and a mismatched top. The beautifully sung, committed performance largely passed me by, as I ached to love the absent, alien Bowie.

Back in the mid-Eighties, BBC television started broadcasting The Rock'n' Roll Years, one of the first rock music retrospectives. Each half-hour episode focused on a year, with news reports and music intermixed to give a revealing look at the development of rock culture against the context of current affairs.

Half a billion dollars is what the top five most lucrative estates of deceased musicians earned last year. The figure represents the cunning work of a few people to turn “legacy” into its own immortal industry. To watch a program on this theme is to peek through the keyhole of a locked cabinet. How does the “RIP business” work? How much – so goes another question – are we really allowed to see?

Even the most ardent Bowie fan might dismissively sum up their idol's pre-fame years with just these three words: The Laughing Gnome.

Adapted by Raymond Briggs from his best-selling graphic novel, When the Wind Blows was released in 1986 and stands up so well that you’re inclined to forgive its flaws: namely David Bowie’s leaden theme song and an abundance of fairly flat black humour. Though, in hindsight, Jimmy T Murakami’s deadpan, quasi-realist look at nuclear Armageddon as it befalls an elderly working class British couple shouldn’t be amusing.

If there were an arts award for loyalty, the Barbican Theatre would surely win it for having kept faith with Michael Clark. It’s no secret that the bad-boy image that has clung to Clark since his punk extravaganzas in the 1980s had consequences in his personal and creative life, forcing frequent "early retirements".

It’s a tricky business, approaching comedy on a day when a national tragedy has just occurred. Comedian and broadcaster Adam Buxton is aware of this. It was especially noticeable last night, with his show delayed as a direct result of the Brighton Dome’s extra door security, post-Manchester. As people slowly filed in to take their seats he patrolled the stage, acknowledging the events of the day before. His attempts to move into comedy were initially somewhat awkward, as if it wasn’t quite appropriate. It’s understandable. There’s a general sense of unsureness as to how to proceed. Are we allowed to have a few laughs celebrating David Bowie’s life following such awful horror and ignorant malice?

The answer, of course, is “Yes, we are.” Otherwise the bad guys win. And Buxton eventually, pre-show, has roaring good humour bubbling up by making an event of giving the audience his rider: a bouquet of flowers and his “very rock’n’roll” boxes of two varieties of yoghurt bar. It’s a simple tactic but it works, and then he can begin the performance proper. “I don’t think much of David Bowie’s new phase,” he says. And we’re off.

Adam Buxton’s BUG: David Bowie Special, to give it its full and proper title, see its bearded presenter deliver what is, in essence, a comedic PowerPoint masterclass, hopping randomly about the Thin White Duke’s career. It begins with the video for “The Jean Genie” followed by a preposterous surreal song, sung by Buxton, which makes maximum use of the giant screen behind him for visual cut-ups.

The format throughout is for Buxton to mine geeky Bowie minutiae, finding humour in the detail, while also acknowledging the talent of all involved, then lathering on silliness. For instance, he talks at length about the rather lacklustre 1985 single “Loving the Alien”, which Bowie, he explains, once said was about the relationship between Muslims and Christians. He then sends the whole thing up, deadpan, before concluding that, sadly, “'Loving the Alien' failed to prevent 9/11.”

He asks us to imagine what RCA executives must have felt when presented with Bowie’s Berlin albums, after the commercial streak of Young Americans and Station to Station, which came immediately prior to them. To illustrate the point he plays the moody electro-orchestral “Warszawa”, then offers us the video for “Be My Wife” in which, he suggests, Bowie, wearing a face of pantomime disapproval, looks as if he’s seen someone crapping on the studio floor.

The BUG shows thrive on YouTube comments and this Bowie special is no exception. The comment, “He is the tasty egg of my breakfast glory”, beneath Bowie’s melancholy 2013 comeback hit “Where Are We Now?” causes particularly uproarious laughter. And the cartoon Bowie sequences, created by BAFTA-winning animators The Brothers McLeod, and perfectly voiced by Buxton, are brilliantly on-point, especially one where Brian Eno and Bowie work on “Warszawa”, with Tony Visconti continually pointing out that he is also the co-producer, "more than people think".

In the end, when this show, which has toured regularly over the last year, should reach an emotive climax with “Heroes” and Buxton’s own tribute montage, its late start becomes a hindrance. People are scuttling off to get trains and Buxton seems to wind things up rather promptly rather than luxuriating. Nonetheless, his Bowie Bug is a conceptually smart, often very funny and occasionally touching evening out.

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Overleaf: Watch the brilliant Brothers McLeod animation purporting to portray David Bowie, Brian Eno and Tony Visconti recording "Warszawa"