Oh god.

I’m so embarrassed. So embarrassed in fact that the best thing to do is just admit it.
I went to see Take That on Friday night.
Nigel had a spare ticket y’see. I met her for something to eat earlier and she was still looking for someone to whom she could offload the extra ticket.
‘Sure if you can’t find anyone, I’ll go with you’ I said.
I blame the wine and lack of food. I was supposed to be meeting friends in a pub and to be fair I went down, had a pint and said hello and then we had to feck off back down to the other side of town.

The Point was full of women. Women in pink glittery cowboy hats, women in pink glittery boas, women in glittery bunny ears, women in tiny strappy tops and high heels. Just inside the doors Louis Walsh was getting his photo taken with some drunken English girls. Note, this is the second time in three years I have been within punching distance of Louis Walsh and done nothing about it. Of course we happened to be standing behind one of those three men for about half an hour of the concert. Nigel isn’t much taller than I am so the two of us grumbled for a bit. Eventually the Jolly Gay Giant trundled off to some other part of the arena and our view was a little better.

Now, I missed out on the whole Take That phenomenon during the ’90’s. I arrived back in Ireland midway through their popchart domination so was unaware of who they were or what they did. Even if I had known I wouldn’t have been interested in buying their albums. I have seen Robbie Williams in concert since (it was at Slane ok?) and thought he was a great showman, he knows how to manipulate a crowd alright. But I never had any inclination to buy, see or listen to any sort of boy pop band. The show on Friday was like being at the biggest hen night in the world. Myself and Nige fell out of the place deaf and stunned. 9000 women (and three men) have amazing lung capacity.

The show itself was, dare I say it, quite impressive. A huge stage which extended out to the back of the Point allowed the band to come out into the audience. And some impressive special effects including a rain storm on stage during ‘Back for Good’ and a hologram of Robbie Williams during the finale ‘Never Forget’. Also on stage were fire eaters, flamenco dancers and a man wearing a corset and spangly thong. Perhaps the less said about that the better though.

At one stage the band performed a Beatlemania medley which went down a storm. I doubt they could have pulled it off 10 years ago. There were a couple of plugs for the new album and a number entitled ‘How to create a boy band’ which was a pure dig at the music industry and appealed to my cynical attitude. Overall it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. A bit of a laugh for a Friday night and although I wasn’t au fait with all of the songs (unlike the screeching banshee beside me, and I don’t mean Nige) it was a good evening.

We even managed to get into Mulligans for last orders.