O2, Dublin

They shrieked at the lowering of the lighting rig, yelled at the turning on of the spotlight, stood on chairs and waved their multicoloured light sabres – and that was half an hour before stage-time.

When the Jonas Brothers emerged from the centre of a revolving stage at the O2 to the sound of Queen’s We Will Rock You, the caterwauling could have been heard at the ferry ports a mile away.

A Jonas Brothers concert is like a revival meeting, except that it is one full of pre-pubescent and adolescent girls. They never let up screaming, not even when Nick, the youngest brother, delivered a public-service style announcement (sponsored by a well-known pharmaceutical company) about his diabetes. How these three brothers, who are famously saving themselves for marriage, could remain the best-known virgins in the world with all this female attention is nearly heroic.

“We know we have the best fans in the world,” said Nick as he serenaded the crowd with the torch ballad, A Little Bit Longer, while playing a grand piano on the revolving stage. They certainly have the loudest fans in the world.

The Jonas Brothers know the way to a teenage heart, opening with Paranoid (no, not the Black Sabbath song) and following on with their statement of intent, That’s Just the Way We Roll.

They write well-crafted, if unremarkable, punk-pop anthems such as BB Good, SOS and Poison Ivy, and mix it up with the big ballads, most notably When You Look Me in the Eyes and I Got to Find You. Fast or slow, the audience knew every word.

The Jonas Brothers are teen idols who can sing, who write their own songs and who have the barefaced effrontery, in an age of TV-promoted glorified karaoke merchants, to play their own instruments.

That must mean something when so much attention is being lavished on a pair of brothers closer to home who can do none of the above.