CityLife

McFly

McFly's Danny

NOT just a bloke. Not just a bloke in a predominantly female audience.

Not just a bloke in a predominantly female audience who’s seen McFly once.

Not just a bloke in a predominantly female audience who’s seen McFly more than once.

But a bloke in a predominantly female audience who's seen McFly twice...and is over 50.

That’s me, which should surely qualify me for some kind of medal.

After all, following Saturday night’s gig, my missus - a late stand in for the daughter, aged 13, who was a fan but has now declared herself to have “outgrown all that sort of stuff” and who decided to stay home and watch telly - said “that was a load of rubbish.”

No it was not. McFly gave the girlies exactly what they wanted in a very competent, slick, Duracell bunny, hormone-inducing kind of way.

They did not disappoint on any level... for the target audience.

Danny the Dish

It didn’t seem to matter to the girls that local lad Danny the Dish now looks like Bob the Builder, slighter stouter of frame and lugging his guitar like a hod.

A check shirt has that effect on a chap, even if he does sport a fringe and white trainers.

The rest of the band still retain the boyish looks that surely is a prerequisite for a boyband, albeit one that plays their own instruments and writes their own songs.

However a headband, an affectation beyond the fashion pale, must be an indication of some kind of desire to morph into Dire Straits.

And thence to oblivion.

McFly, though, unlike the inspiration behind their name, were not so much back to the future as back to the past, relying on a back-catalogue in longevity that is almost a contradiction in terms for boybands.

So It’s All About You, that nostalgic, sing-a-longy anthem that, in a previous generation could have been penned by Chas and Dave, got the glowsticks waving like the hoorays at the Last Night of the Proms.

Hippy

But quite how enjoying that moment equated to “turning into a hippy”, as the band suggested, completely kerfuffled me, except for the fact that it was mostly acoustic.

The rest of the concert, though, saw McFly clearly unhippy as they powered their way through the sub-prime, sub-punk pop of Obviously, Michael Jackson’s Black Or White, Radioactive, Lies, Lies Lies and, for the encore, Five Colours In Her Hair.

Everything you’d expect then. And more. The boys managed to hover on a gliding raft over the audience, like the mother ship in Close Encounters.

And flames shot up from the stage, we were treated to a home video and Dougie said “give it up for my new blue bass guitar.”

Yep, that got a scream too.

Not from my missus, obviously, but then she’s not 15.

But neither were the two girls in front of us - I’d say 19 - who were incandescent with rage at the end over the sight of a groupie shamelessly flirting with a bouncer to get back stage.

A lass with McFlies on her mind, no doubt. She didn’t make it, but at least the thousands of others could still harbour teen dream fantasies of boyband devotion... till the next one comes along. Obviously.

What did you think of McFly's set? Have your say.