For a few moments here David Essex must have known exactly how that other cockney rapscallion Michael Caine must have felt back on the set of Zulu as the 'horns of the buffalo' bore down on him. For noble warriors read middle-aged women; for Rorke's Drift read the stage of the Royal Albert Hall.
As the dry ice machines began to belch - meaning Davie's quite clearly on his way - at least two dozen hormonally over-heated ladies of a non too callow age charge forward, each one of them bearing that strange hungry luck on their faces that Tom always used to get when he was trying to be oh so good even though Jerry had just morphed into a can't-stop-dancing chicken-drumstick.
Clearly having not thought the whole thing through though, they didn't have a clue what to do up there when they actually hit the lip of the stage. Milling around and waving to the object of your teenage obsession as he studiously tries to avoid making eye contact probably wasn't what they had in mind.
Still, it's been many a long day since David Essex was anybody's pin-up and time's tide is finally starting to break upon his cheeky little face. Try telling that to this crowd though, especially the hyperactive forty-something to my right who spent the entire night bootlegging the whole thing on an old tape-recorder the size of a breadbin that's she's somehow smuggled in jammed into a white, vinyl holdall.
So what highlights then will she be listening back to well into her dotage? Everything you might expect from a greatest hits show really with the occasional clunker of a new song thrown in which at least gives everybody the chance to go to the toilet. 'Hold Me Close' and 'Gonna Make You A Star' retain all their chirpy charm, 'Nightclubbing' and 'Oh What A Circus' as big and daft as
pop ever should be. 'Oh Suburbia' is Blur's entire 'Parklife' album condensed into four minutes of perky fluff while the trippy dub of 'Rock On' remains probably the most avant garde single ever to be released by a so-called teen heart-throb.
Self-deprecating banter and a complete lack of rhythm all go towards making David Essex one of the more agreeable of your mum's old faves. If he ever chose to cover Damon's 'To the End' in a strictly non-ironic way then he might just find himself back in the top ten as well. Come on Dave, there's a slightly unhinged lady next to me that would buy a hundred copies and that's for sure...
