John Howard

Outside, London basks in a sunny soda spring day - it is 135pm and inside this tiny theatre, perhaps for the first time in 28 years, John Howard sits at a baby grand playing Kid In A Big World.

This is weird. I haven't been listening to anything but John's one perfect album these past few weeks. I've forged a friendship with this record, fallen asleep to it, got drunk with it, pored over its sleeve for clues, bent and sniffed its perfect vinyl.

And now my dream is made public flesh and there are other lovers, there in the dark stalls. Perhaps I shouldn't have had poppy tea for breakfast but I feel like shooing 'em away, telling 'em to get out of my dream, leaving just me, John and our baby grand.

I'd imagined this gig in my head... Sorry, gig isn't appropriate. There's a bouquet of lilies on stage! I mean show.

So, I'd fantasised about this event and had trouble fixing an image. As I say, it's almost 30 years since the album first came out. How would John look? How would he sound? Well, cutting to the chase: wonderful on both counts. Exquisite as charged. A lovely suit and a big fat pink tie, the voice still Chardonnay albeit aged in oak.

Still slim. Full head of hair. A class act. Perhaps a little smooth for some tastes? Well, not mine. I lapped it up.

He did the bulk of the album (no Someday In Miami though? Why? Why?) He did my favourite "lost" song - Big Adventures In A Small Town - and still nailed the falsetto chorus like a deadeye dick in downtown Harlem.

A group joined the man a quarter way through: a noisy drummer, an adequate bassist and a sublime electric cellist. I would have preferred just John, the lilies and the grand but then I'm greedy and spoilt.

He talks about his influences: The Beatles, Jimmy Webb. Again, I'm spoilt but if John is gonna do a cover I'd have preferred something from the former. Wichita Lineman has been covered so many times as to be opaque to these ears but at least it gives me the chance to listen to someone who can really play a piano.

He introduces Goodbye Suzie as being the first of his two singles to be banned by the silly '70s BBC. ("Too depressing" - balls, say we). It's a rousing rendition yet I do miss the reptilian saxes of the recorded version. Still, ya can't stop a chorus like that.

And then. My knackered bladder forces me to the nearest gents. (Waterstones bookshop around the corner). And when I return I've missed the encore - a new song. Which in a way, is sort of perfect.

As is meeting Mr Howard toward the end of this blacked out spring afternoon. He proves to be nowt but a gentlemen; all true smiles, liquid charm and piano fingers. My kinda guy. A guy with the rest of our lives ahead of him.

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