If you want a beer tonight, no problem, no queues. But if it's burger & chips, sweets, glittery bouncing Alice bands or – God forbid – the girls toilets you're after, forget it! 15,000 under 10s, and their harassed looking mums are gathered to witness the return of the Spice Girls and they all appear to want to do exactly the same thing at the same time.
Inside the massive hall a raised circular stage sits beneath a throbbing, giant icicle. David Beckham and ickle baby Brooklyn are shown to their seats by a security team obviously concerned about the threat posed by this mass of My Little Pony fans, and the show begins.
Darkness, lasers, more throbbing and then there they are coming up through the floor at the end of a Winter Wonderland walkway straight from a Percy Ingle window display. Bang! Flames shoot to the ceiling, little girls wet their wooly tights and 'Spice Up Your Life' gets underway.
It's very impressive. Huge and gleaming, dusted in glitter and transfixing – and that's just Mel G's bosom. I don't know what it cost, but boy it was worth it. Bigger than Emma's thighs, more impressive than Melanie C's cod-karate kicks and more upturned than Posh's nose. Magnificent. The smattering of previously terrified dads in the crowd are now wearing smug grins.
There's a band hidden beneath the 'in the round' stage. We can just about see men wearing headphones bobbing in time with huge stabs of keyboards which propel old favourites like 'Say You'll Be There' on as the girls work the stage and wave to the fans while Victoria tries not to worry about baby Brooklyn's ear drums.
When they chat between numbers, they all chat at once and you can't hear a word. Mel G's got the loudest voice (that'll be the lung power) and Posh tries not to say anything at all. This is helped by the fact that her microphone is switched off and that when her vocal line comes along (she has one in each song) we miss the first half of it while the sound man turns her up. She's the best dancer by far though, her wrist rolls and toe points echoed by a legion of bopping Princesses in the crowd.
Of the three new songs on show tonight, 'Hollar Hollar' is the best – a TLC 'No Scrubs' guitar intro mashed by a latter day EBTG type synth shuffle. 'Right Back At Ya' and 'Woman' will both make decent enough album tracks and the Spice Girls need them. They've been singing some of these songs, 'Something Kinda Fun', 'Mamma', 'Stop Right Now' – which they do twice – for too long now.
The only surprises tonight are an hydraulically lifted orchestra, with their violins wrapped in clingfilm for the brilliant 'Viva Forever' and two costume changes. The first change features a tight fitting, electronic looking outfit with evidently creeping underwear (not easy to adjust your knickers with 20,000 people watching), followed by a finale of Christmas taffeta and fake fur which ushers in a triumphant karaoke of Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' and Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Xmas Every Day'. Brooklyn bounces on Daddy's lap and the rest of the kids bounce off the walls all the way home – after they've queued up again for the toilets of course.
