Childline concert

I’ve never seen anything like it. I was never a pop kid. My mum never escorted me to Take That concerts, I never wore East 17 t-shirts and Top Of The Pops eluded me. It’s safe to say that until this precise moment, mass hysteria and I have never been formally introduced.

The queue snaked in and around The Point, glow sticks waving and red antennae flashing. Inside, the screams from four and a half thousand under fourteens reached ear-bleeding volume by eight o clock.

I have to say, being far from old and weathered myself, the magic was infectious. Seeing Six, A1, Hear’Say and Fifth Avenue writhing around onstage bore a striking resemblance to Barbie and Ken coming to life. And they could sing.

But, it is essentially cabaret. S Club 7 had the nerve to walk off stage after their first number to be handed their microphones and A1 didn’t even bother to try, playing the keyboards amazingly with no leads or power supply. It’s not like we acually expect them to play live or sing or anything, but they could fake it with a little more style – a rare commodity in pop, brought home in this instance by the mini diva Sophie Ellis Bextor, one of the few female performers not flashing cleavage.

By the time Westlife were due up, the hyseria had manifested into frenzy. Ireland’s walking Colgate commercial strutted out clad in black leather trousers and enough Brylcreem to sink the Titanic all over again. As they launched into ‘Uptown Girl’, I began to feel a little queasy. By number two I felt compelled to leave.

Nonetheless, an educated guess tells me that the glitter fell from the ceiling, the stage went up in a blaze of fireworks, Westlife became deities, those four and a half thousand under fourteens had the greatest fantasy of their lives and mums and dads cursed the traffic on the way out.

But we’re not surprised at all.