What is that smell that hits you full in the face as you make your way into the arena? Strangely reminiscent of the food hall at Harvey Nic's, it's a vivid riotous fog of mix 'n' match aromas; sweetness and salt, cheap perfume and the sweaty tang of over-ripe bacon. This it soon becomes apparent is the pheromonal stench of lust and it probably hasn't changed much from the bobby-sox days of Sinatra through to tonight's cut of prime beefsteak. Only the names change and whilst Ricky Martin may lack the exotic moniker of a Presley or a Bowie it sure is the only drab thing about him on this evidence.
Entertainment of the lowest common denominator and the highest f**king order, Ricky Martin makes our own fat dancing contender Robbie Williams look like Joe Pasquale. Six feet two of trouser-bulge and teeth, he's a pumping, grinding love-god hewn from the finest Latino cheese. Opening with last years mighty 'Livin' la Vida Loca', Ricky acts out the groin-jiggling camp-as-Christmas-classic whilst encased in a huge silver Cadillac. As his ass threatens to start smoking with all the trouser-troubling gyrations the boy's giving it, the car rises from the stage as if perpetual pelvic motion has temporarily bestowed upon it the power of flight. Surely something for John Prescott to look into.
Women scream, young girls hyperventilate and grown men with a soft spot for show-tunes come over all swoony. 'Shake Your Bon-Bon' is as fruity as it is daft, a jalapeno hot thrustabout that must have shook the poor boy's loins to a jelly.
We get ballads with Ricky's big doe eyes looking down on us from the overhead video screens, 30 foot across of ersatz emotion, 30 foot across of nothing made flesh. Ricky Martin could have healed the lame tonight if he'd chosen to but instead he did what he's been doing since he was 12 years old: making people forget.
Making people forget that their lives are that little bit dull and that their partner is just ain't a singing and dancing Latin sensation. Making people forget that it's double maths first thing on Monday morning or that their boss still refers to them as 'thingy' six months into their new job.
24 carat, gilt-edged escapist fantasy, Ricky Martin is how Dale Winton imagines himself to be when he closes his over-mascared eyes at night. Handsome and talented and bonkers to the core.
Pictures by Hayley Madden
