You can say what you like about Beverley Knight - but you can't say she's not a grafter. Three weeks into the soul-sapping horror of the office party season and a tangible sense of wet-Monday-night inertia infects the Apollo pre-gig bar. Undeterred, however, Beverley Knight fizzes into this less than dynamic atmosphere and for 90 minutes performs as if her life literally depends on it.
Maybe she's just de-mob happy on this, the last night of her UK tour; or maybe she's like this every time she gets up on stage. Whichever is this case, Knight's relentlessly exuberant performance - constantly peppered with the considerate, but frankly quite unnecessary enquiry "LONDON. ARE YOU READY?" - is met with a hysterical response. When she wheels out Lemar, fresh from the Fame Academy house for an impromptu duet certain sections crowd look fit to self combust.
It's all quite exciting, but from beneath the ear-piercing screams and vocal histrionics emerges an artist with considerably more depth than her recorded output suggests.
For a start, it's hard to appreciate just how stunning Beverley Knight's voice is until you witness it live - and if that sounds like an obvious point, then think again. Based on some admittedly rather superficial judgements on tonight's crowd - informed chiefly by the general standard of hair cut and some rather poorly co-ordinated dance moves - Beverly Knight's fans are largely drawn from the 'buy-two-CDs-a-year' demographic. The fact that she inhabits this bland pop never-world does her a great disservice, however.
Often we don't credit the likes of Beverley Knight - the kind of artist who, let's face it, in another era might have gone down well with first division footballers - with any great musical conviction. Their talents are often dismissed as just boringly competent. On the basis of tonight, however, Beverley Knight is a woman with a latent passion for music and a truly spectacular voice to match.
She's also a good deal sexier than her record company might have us believe. Maybe it's down to her name - for some reason 'Beverley' brings to mind a kind of uncomfortably overbearing 'mumsy' type character - but Ms Knight has never been sold as a sex symbol. Tonight, however, clad in a mini skirt clearly not designed for a wet December evening in Hammersmith, Beverley prowls the stage seemingly possessed by her slightly misguided - but let's face it, infinitely more entertaining - sex kitten alter ego.
So, a sexy grafter with a cracking voice - not a bad post gig epitaph by anyone's standards - and certainly a welcome respite from the interminable office party fray.
