To start off with it was seated! After six consecutive days of standing at concerts, that was such a welcome relief tonight! Thankfully though people kept getting up to their feet and were a great crowd! During Charles Gounod’s Waltz from “Faust”, some couples at the front started waltzing so the lighting guys kept the spotlights on them! One guy really played up to the crowd and received a massive round of applause afterwards! Members of the orchestra were straining to see what was going on!

It was the first time that I’ve seen all the first half of the concert for a few days and Martin Fry’s stage presence has improved quite a bit! At the start of the tour, he mainly just stood and sang on the stage but now he’s reacting better with the crowd.

John Miles always receives an amazing reaction. He starts with ELO’s Mister Blue Sky and then goes into his massive hit Music (Was My First Love) which is almost the anthem of NOTP. There’s a dramatic part in the middle when he stops and tonight he got the crowd to cheer before he continued!

As usual, the highlight of the first half was Marco Borsato! I’m going to miss him next week when the concerts are in Germany! As soon as the intro to his music started, people got up and were dancing! Although most people know his first two songs, I often think I’m the only one in the place that isn’t singing along to his last track!

The special guest tonight was the French guy again (Gerrard something) who sings two songs in French…but most people sing along to them.

It seemed unusual but people remained seated during Meat Loaf’s opening song Home By Now / No Matter What. (I wasn’t complaining though as I had a perfect view!) Meat Loaf’s voice sounded slightly hoarse during that song tonight but maybe he hadn’t warmed up properly as he sounded fine during the other songs. Kasim’s vocals were brilliant during the song!

At the beginning of You Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth, as Meat Loaf ran across the stage, he knocked his microphone stand flying! Kasim calmly picked it up and laid the microphone on the piano. When Meat Loaf grabbed the stand as he was about to sing, Kasim just calmly handed the microphone to him too! (Later in Paradise, Meat hands his mike to Pearl to hold but tonight when she handed it back to him, it was round the wrong way so he only just turned it before he was due to sing!) Kasim, Patti and Pearl did the singing and clapping part (with Mark just clapping) for quite a while tonight until Meat called out “One more Johnny” as he always does!

Anything For Love was as strong as ever tonight (I still haven’t spotted where they removed “eight bars of orchestration in the middle”!) The Belgian crowd all clap and sing along to that song and Patti gets a big cheer when she starts singing!

It was the intro into Paradise which was definitely the highlight for me tonight! As usual, Meat Loaf got Laurie Wisefield to play a lot at the beginning but then he got Kasim to the front of the stage to join Laurie doing it too! Next, Laurie played quietly so that it was just Kasim playing! It was simply amazing to hear and watch!! The notes he got out of the bass were incredible - he really does play it brilliantly! (It reminded me of his solo spot in The Ikon last year!) The audience applauded Kasim afterwards too!

Again tonight, Meat Loaf decided that we didn’t sing the word “Light” loud enough so he started to walk off stage! Kasim (wearing a black jumper) came to the front of the stage and encouraged us to keep cheering to bring him back! Eventually it took us three attempts to sing it before Meat Loaf was satisfied! Meat Loaf then messed up the start of the second verse (which the band found really funny!) so they had to stop and play it again!

Yellow Submarine was as light hearted as ever (although for some reason, Kasim didn’t muck about as much as he usually does - he did end up with Mark Alexander’s hand across his face at one point though!). All too soon for me, it was time for them to throw bouquets and to leave the stage!

Roll on Germany on Friday…..!

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