Gig played on 20/11/05

A club crowded with hot, sweaty gay boys. A level of ear-piercing screaming last heard when The Beatles played live. And when Madonna yells "I made this record for you f*ckers", she is not paying lip service. Unlike the desperadoes (Dannii) and the cynics (Liberty X) who you'll normally find prancing on the G.A.Y. stage each Saturday, Madonna is not only a genuine superstar but forged her career and sustained it through a deep understanding and exploitation of gay dance subculture.

All of which explains why tonight really is that most over-used of words - an EVENT. Hence the giant glitterball revolving outside the Astoria, hence the 24-hour queues to grab the 1,000 or so tickets made available to the general public, hence the ridiculous police presence and hence the palpable hysteria in the crowd. Long rumoured but never really believed, tonight Madonna is coming home.

And from her entrance through a dazzling glitterball backdrop to her exit in a hurricane of pink balloons, she delivers the kind of poised but sweaty, arch but intimate performance that has been impossible since she ascended to mega-stadium success. She pivots that yoga-worked behind practically into the faces of the front row and grabs adoring, outstretched hands. And even if you suspect she'll be disinfecting those hands for hours afterwards, it is still a revelatory moment of bonding between super-superstar and audience.

And she's not joking about that new album. If "American Life" was oddly aloof, "Confessions On A Dance Floor" is an amyl nitrate rush of a record, all throbbing beats and disco glitz that will enthral gay clubs from Torquay to Turkey. Just hear tonight's opener, "Hung Up", Madonna's silliest, catchiest, most exhilarating single in years. And though the stage fills with eight spinning, leaping, back- flipping dancers, it's impossible to take your eyes off this tiny 47-year-old woman dressed in the skimpiest of pink spandex. This is charisma, distilled, and something impossible to spot from the back row of Wembley Arena.

Boy George once brilliantly observed that Madonna looked like she "could use an hour on a bouncy castle", but tonight she seems to be having more fun than her pinched public image would suggest, whether ordering the front row to join her in shedding their tops or writhing on the floor to a teasing, stomping "I Love New York". Only the po-faced "Let It Will Be" - presumably one of those pesky confessions and just as self-indulgent as that sounds - disappoints.

The night ends with a knowing nod to the past, with a brash bounce through obscure first single "Everybody", the song that first gained her recognition on the New York gay scene. When played at Koko a few days earlier, the straight audience were apparently totally non-plussed. Tonight every word is sung back joyously. Forgive the generalisation, but Madonna gets gay men and tonight they got her.

by Jaime Gill