Rick.
‘And me,’ confirms Ben.
I’m suspicious. Is Adam planning on staging some sort of American-style ‘intervention’? I didn’t even know what an intervention was until I started watching Desperate Housewives. For the benefit of the uninitiated, allow me to explain. An intervention is where ‘concerned’ friends and family gang together to tell their loved one something their loved one doesn’t want to hear; ostensibly for their own good. I watched the episode in an early series where everyone tried to tell Bree her drinking was spiralling out of control. Like she wants to hear that after discovering her current fiancé murdered her first husband, her son’s gay and there’s dust on her pelmets. You can imagine; it went down like a bucket of steaming vomit. Why wouldn’t it? Who wants to be subjected to mass bullying by their nearest and dearest; it’s bad enough being on the receiving end of unasked for advice on an individual basis.
Is Adam hoping to surround me with friends and family and convince me that Scott is a dastardly villain and I ought to cease contact immediately? Perhaps even go back to him? Idiot. For one thing, Jess has already tried and failed to do as much and for another, I can’t imagine either Ben or Rick intervening to try to put me off Scott. Ben never judges and will be wild about even the remotest possibility of me hooking up with Scott because then he might piggyback his way to some fabulous parties. Ditto Rick. I don’t honestly think he’d notice that I’ve changed boyfriends even if I do upgrade to a mega pop star and my picture appears regularly in all the glossy gossip mags. So sod off Adam. I’m a big girl now. And, pertinently, I’m not your girl. I wait for the onslaught of objections and the insistence that I do a reality check; none come. Maybe Adam didn’t plan an intervention after all; maybe he simply didn’t want the tickets to go to waste.
I don’t know how Scott does it. For this is the third and final gig yet he somehow manages to scour up enough energy not only to pull off a show on a par with the previous two but somehow a show that is yet more glittering. A lesser mortal would be knackered by now and crying out for Lucozade. But Scott manages to take us all the extra mile, a mile I would have believed it impossible to travel. He has even more power than the previous two nights. He sings with a smidgen more depth and meaning. He dances with an iota more energy, he chats to the audience with a manner that’s fractionally more relaxed. He’s sensational.
‘I don’t get what you see in him,’ says Rick with a shrug and an ironic grin. I smile back. I can tell Rick’s impressed, he’s aglow. The tens of thousands of fans jump, holler, cry, scream, clap, stamp and cheer throughout the two-hour gig. It’s a storming concert and Scott is riding high in the sky. He struts around the stage, performing that magical mix of the sexual and personal that makes each girl think he’s performing just for her. He invites the entire crowd to be his friend. They scream like frenzied devil-worshippers and pledge eternal devotion. The whole audience quivers with excitement or passion or (according to Jess) cold. But she’s wrong, it’s a warm night.
Scott eventually comes on stage to sing his final song and then the encore. He repeatedly punches the air; over and over again. With every punch the crowds indulge in yet more hysterical and harried antics; women swoon, men swear, kids promise themselves they’ll grow up to be rock stars.
Scott takes in the view and treats us to a wide, unrepentant smile. After some time he holds up his hands in an effort to lull the audience into quietness. They take his gesture as a sign that he’s requesting more adoration and a fresh surge of madness is pushed into the night. It takes a drum roll and his repeated requests before the crowd finally hushes up and listens to what else he has to say or sing. I now know the run of the show, almost like the back of my hand. He’s already sung ‘Fall Apart’, ‘Come Back to Me’ and ‘Bit of Rough’, ‘Hate to Love’, ‘Demons’, ‘Dead Love’ and ‘Tell Me Something’. I search my mind for an outstanding song that he’s contractually obliged to deliver, I