"What the fuck do you have to do to get played on the radio?"

These are the words Morrissey spat out early in his set and his mood darkened even more when he let out his displeasure at the sound quality at this cavernous venue, even stopping singing halfway through songs to say ‘that sounds horrible’, asking the audience if it sounded rubbish and covering his ears from time to time.

The rehabilitation of Morrissey has been a remarkable one, a supposed spent force in the mid to late nineties, in the space of three years he has released two albums nearing the quality of ‘Your Arsenal’ and ‘Vauxhall and I’ and judging by the adoration afforded to him tonight he could record an album of himself on the toilet and his fans would think it was brilliant…..a bit weird that, so we’ll leave it there.

Kicking off with a killer brace of ‘You have killed me’, a stunning ‘How soon is now’ and ‘First of the gang to die’ he rapidly whips the crowd into a frenzy and even when he apologizes for his course language mentioned earlier, the crowd scream for him to swear more.

The reason for his tirade is in response to being told that Radio 1 and Virgin Radio are refusing to play his latest tracks, hardly a loss what with both stations being total gubbins and how would Virgin be able to fit him in between all the U2 and Snow Patrol they pollute the airwaves with anyway?

Of the sound quality, whatever he was hearing didn’t transmit to the venue, it sounded fine, mesmerizing renditions of ‘Life is a pigsty’ from his latest ‘Ringleader of the tormentors’ album and a beautiful ‘Let me kiss you’ didn’t sound like they suffered from any sound imperfections, in fact they were pretty damn perfect

However concentrating on your last two albums when you have such a vast brace of brilliant music under your belt is totally self-indulgent and although he plays a storming ‘Still ill’, you also get the nauseating ‘Girlfriend in a coma’ and where he fails to play anything at all from his two finest solo albums, ‘Arsenal’ and Vauxhall’ you get unreleased b-sides and a track from his much hated ‘Maladjusted’ album ‘Trouble loves me’ (granted – it was amazing).

By the time he plays the final track ‘At last I am born’ (or should that be bored?), he has already decided that once he’s ripped his shirt off – that’s it, no more. The crowd waits for ten minutes not believing that he won’t return but he doesn’t and when they realize -the majority of the crowd then start to boo. The booing was quite bad but I have to admit to joining in.

It was a great gig but the star of it showed extreme arrogance and ungratefulness to his fans that paid £33 to see their hero pull a petulant strop, if the sound quality was rubbish for him it’s not us who should have been punished for it. 8/10 (music) 4/10 (for the behaviour)

Chris Todd