Tom Waits: Ronnie Scott's, London

IT'S NOT easy to discover the real Tom Waits. He's continually performing. Off stage, in conversation, he frequently draws from his onstage material in his responses, but on stage he becomes a virtual caricature of himself. He exaggerates his mannerisms, gesticulating like a hip fingerpoppin' Magnus Pike. He over emphasises his sandpaper voice — either that, or he'd been heavily imbibing cleaning fluids the night before. Whether the image is real or not — and I suspect it is, though in a more diluted form — Tom Waits, at Ronnie Scott's on Wednesday failed to come across.