A live Morrissey concert is the nearest music can get to a truly religious experience with his fans elevating him to an almost messiah like position as the room physically shakes with anticipation.

The crowd are whipped up to rabid fervour by a series of bad 70s Eurovision videos, 1950s leather clad troubadours interspersed with footage of New York dolls and homo-erotic out-takes of James Dean in East of Eden.

Then on they come, against a Richard Burton backdrop, Morrissey and gang go straight for the kill with a euphoric version of The Smiths classic ‘How soon is now’ resulting in immediate pandemonium.

Hotfooting into ‘The 1st of the gang to die’ followed by a spiky ‘I just want to see the boy happy’ ensures an eating and out of hand scenario ensues.

This being Morrissey and with the current racism accusations floating around, he is on the ropes (a position he hardly goes out of his way to get out of, he’s likelier to fan the flames while clutching to said ropes) and therefore at his most belligerent, such as introducing newie ‘That’s how people grow up’ to every radio station apart from Radio One or telling the crowd he is suffering from a cold as having “a frog in my throat…and no…I don’t mean a small French person” before kicking into a majestic “Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before” which reduces the ridiculous Mark Ronson cover as creatively redundant and pointless as it should have been noticed as being upon first listen.

The occasional thuggish element in the crowd are fuelled by two of Morrissey’s more contentious tunes; ‘National Front disco’ and ‘Death of a disco dancer’, the former being the catalyst for the accusations of racist tendencies back when it was released in 1992 on his finest solo effort, ‘Your Arsenal’. Although slightly ambiguous of title, the connotations were based on the lyric; “There’s a country, you don’t live there but one day you would like to”, which has Morrissey adopting the character of a National Front speaker, very similar to the mini rally held in the car lot in the Shane Meadows film ‘This Is England’, a speech delivered to a young impressionable boy, encouraging him to join the party and ‘do his bit’, only Morrissey’s lyric was not an acclaimed film and was written fifteen years too early, having said that, the crowd pumping their fists to the refrain “England for the English” shows that not even Morrissey fans realise that and may even sympathise with the lyric.

Dusting down ‘Vauxhall and I’ showstopper ‘Why don’t you find out for yourself’ for an indignant run through and an even dustier long lost Smiths classic ‘Stretch out and wait’, gorgeous musical distractions catapult Morrissey off his favoured ropes as he hits the crowd with a fired up ‘Irish blood, English heart’ and encore of ‘Last of the famous international playboys’ leaving a jubilant crowd practically begging for more, on this form, it’d be stupid to pick a fight with him.

Typically the highlight of the evening is a mesmerising rendition of ‘You are the quarry’ highlight, ‘Life is a pigsty’ which creates a haemorrhage of emotions from hugging, kissing to crying such is the sheer power of a tragic pop maestro offering his heart to the audience whilst performing at his most majestic…it was alright.