Walk down St Giles in Oxford on two days at the beginning of September, and you cannot possibly miss St Giles’ Fair. At the Martyrs’ Memorial end Noyce’s golden gallopers sail majestically round, the beautifully painted horses moving gently up and down. At the War Memorial end, screams rent the air as riders sample the latest high-tech rides.

All the Fun of the Fair definitely features the slow-burn, Martyrs’ Memorial end of the fairground business. It’s a tribute show to David Essex – if you can have a tribute show to someone who is still very much with us. Essex plays Levi (you never hear his first name), a travelling showman. The year is 1978, and business is not good – judging by Colin Richmond’s set design, poor old Levi can’t even afford to replace the dead light bulbs on his rides.

What to do? Should he try to buy something more exciting – a Wall of Death perhaps? But gradually a problem emerges. Even supposing he could scrape the cash together, there is mysterious mention of “The Accident”. Levi’s wife, it seems, was killed in a fairground accident – presumably on a previous, and all too accurately named, Wall of Death: there is a charged pause when it’s suggested that daughter Rosa (Louise English) should become the new third rider. Meanwhile, Levi’s rough and ready son (Paul-Ryan Carberry) ravishes the daughter of a local garage proprietor (Tanya Robb), with highly predictable results.

The script (Jon Conway) doesn’t offer a lot of opportunity for deep character development, but David Essex plainly enjoys sending himself, and his character, up.

“When I was skinny, and had long, dark curls,” he tells us, “My chat-up line was: ‘Would you like to come and see my Big Dipper?’” That, by the by, is as smutty as it gets.

But although the storyline veers towards the thin, you do want to know what is going to happen next. So I was genuinely sorry to leave in the interval – the state of the road between Bicester and Milton Keynes forced the decision on me.

Anyway, the story is only a peg on which to hang trademark Essex ballads, which are nicely sung, albeit sometimes so quietly that you can’t hear the words. Never mind, the tunes were a great comfort as I drove gingerly home, and the audience around me at Milton Keynes much enjoyed the likes of A Winter’s Tale, Rock On, Hold Me Close, and Silver Dream Machine.

All the Fun of the Fair continues at Milton Keynes Theatre until Saturday. Tickets: 0870 060 6652 or www.ambassadortickets.com/ miltonkeynes