Alfie Boe at the Albert Hall

Nice to get out and about and say enough already to the daily grind. Enough already to Excel training courses, Word training courses, PowerPoint, macros and all the rest of it. And a free ticket! Alfie Boe at London's magnificent Royal Albert Hall. Puffing and panting I arrived fashionably late as the Great Leader phoned with my further orders. Door 9, 2nd Tier, box 68. 

Blimey! That's generous, box tickets at the Albert Hall don't come cheap and these ones were 75 quid a pop.

I had my suspicions, what was this all about? Had I foolishly volunteered for something? No, the Great Leader assured me that he was just showing his appreciation for all the jolly good work that I had been doing recently. I still had my doubts and could not help but feel that this ticket was originally intended for someone much more alluring than myself.

The GL is a generous guy but his largesse is usually in the fish and chips, cheese sandwich and packet of crisps department. Never mind, don't look a gift horse in the mouth and enjoy the show. Now, I have to confess that I'd never heard of Alfie Boe until recently, apparently he has something to do with something called Les Mis and that my not knowing this means that I am an ignorant peasant and a muppet. OK. Well, I knew that and I didn't want to say anything more as I was clearly surrounded by a full house of Alfie Boe fans.

The auditorium at the Royal Albert Hall is quite something with an excellent view from our box but, for me, the real bonus was a bit more leg room than the usual theatre stalls which I always find a little cramped. I put this down to my slightly stocky build.

"Take a seat, dear boy" says the old fellow in one of his avuncular moods, sinking back into red plush comfort. He's definitely up to something. Here's the view from the box and you will notice the complete absence of the back view of somebody's head which is my usual experience. Having not been to the Albert Hall since I was a nipper I enjoyed a good goggle at the place particularly admiring the Star Trek ceiling with its flying saucers. What I did not know about these boxes is that the door locks behind you should you leave to go for a pee and that banging sound that you can hear is actually someone wanting to come back in. I'm still in disgrace.

The hall is styled in high camp Victorian except for the ceiling which is space age futuristic. Mushroom shaped fibreglass acoustic diffusers, lit in blue, hang from the roof of the hall and above them you can see fluted aluminium panels, lit in red. These are below the original glass roof and counteract the hall's notorious echo. I find this sort of thing fascinating and could go on and on about it for hours. Sadly, nobody else does and I was told to shut up. On with the show...

Alfie bounced on stage accompanied by a rock band of three guitarists (including Matt White and Murray Gould), drums, keyboards, horns section, a couple of very slinky backing singers and an eight-strong strings section in mini-skirts. Was this Alfie Boe the well known opera and romantic ballads singer? No, tonight was Alfie Boe the Rock Star. I don't know whether his regular fans appreciated all this but I thoroughly enjoyed it, he opened up with a few Elvis numbers and brought the house down with a rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water". Was I becoming a closet gospel fan? And when they did Harry Nilsson's "Everybody's Talkin" I knew that I had come to the right place.

We were treated to a quiet interlude with acoustic guitars, some traditional Italian love songs and a couple of sofas full of female Alfie fans. He had asked for a couple of young ladies to join him on stage but an entire posse descended and subjected the poor fellow to trial by serial snogging. And then came the show stopper, the moment all Alfie fans had been waiting for, "Bring Him Home" from Les Mis.

I don't know whether this was staged or not but Alfie plucked one of his Les Mis chums, John Owen-Jones, out of the audience and invited him onto the stage to do a few bars of "Bring Him Home".

It was a joyful moment to see the two chaps singing together, there's a line in the song that goes "Now I am gone..." and off he went! JOJ scarpered, exit stage left and went back to his seat just like that. Quite right too, he was probably a bit worried that his choc ice was melting.

It was a really good turn as he clearly wasn't expecting it, had arrived on stage with his hands shaking and hadn't had a chance to warm up but nevertheless he launched into song like a good 'un. You have to take your hat off to these old crooners, they are a sight to behold.

Here's John Owen-Jones taking his leave and once again proving that it's as important to leave with aplomb as it is to arrive in style.

The rest of the Boe Show was outstanding, full of ancient hits which I thoroughly enjoyed and to end it all a performance of another great favourite of mine "Shine a Light". This song is off the Rolling Stones 1972 album "Exile on Main Street" and I have never, ever heard anyone else cover it other than myself in the shower. Fantastic, a smile on my face and a tear in my eye. There were so many other people getting up on stage that I considered going up myself and asking Alfie if he was going to do requests.

I was going to suggest his doing Albert King's "Like A Road Leading Home". It's the final track on Albert's 1971 Stax album "Lovejoy" and is, in my opinion, a sadly neglected classic gem of a song. It's a bit bluesy, it's a little bit gospel, Alfie's got just the voice for it and he's definitely got the band. What do you think?

Oh dear, I think I've just become an Alfie fan. Now, if you are already an Alfie fan but you have not yet discovered the Alfie Boe fansite then it's high time you did, it's a real treat. By the way, I got my comeuppance for being a bit cheeky about Alfie Boe and Les Mis.