To criticise Barry Manilow and his ladies, who sign letters "Lots of Manilove", is a gratuitous exercise. They've heard it all before. And after spending Friday night in what he calls "the Manilow Zone" - a parallel universe in which the Brooklyn love god is perennially number one in the charts (something he has never actually achieved here) - any desire to poke fun is extinguished. Why bother when he does it all himself? At the end of an athletic Could It Be Magic, which he co-croons with a thunderstruck Margaret from Halifax, he says, "Now the sex machine's gotta sit down" - and there are ripples of laughter rather than lust.

While some of the overwhelmingly female house would probably love to see what's underneath that disco-era suit (what does one wear under a black shirt in this post-medallion age?), many more are here for the same reason Manilow's here - for an orgy of lush popular song.

He shows off his considerable arranging and interpreting skills, leading a large orchestra through a selection of hits, Broadway show-tunes and Sinatra standards, the latter from the Grammy-nominated Manilow Sings Sinatra. He extracts maximum cheese from the lighter-waving Mandy, but it's top-drawer parmesan; he flings himself, hips swivelling madly, into Copacabana, which was written before Ricky Martin was even born. He does the relaxed-crooner thing as satinly as Tony Bennett and if he really is nothing but a cynical manipulator of female hearts, he's a flawlessly entertaining one.