Good God, this was showbiz; the kind of gig that measures itself in articulated trucks rather than songs. There were lights, dancers, costumes, jiggying about and even, occasionally, a bit of singing. Whether it was any good I'm still not sure, but it exuded enough slickness and pzazz to make the likes of B*Witched look like amateur dramatics night at Rathmines Ladies Club.
But for all that, the night began in a far more sedate fashion with Belinda Carlisle singing. How quaint. Support acts are usually less worthy of a mention than the quality of the tea, but not all support acts are Belinda Carlisle, a pop star of impeccable credentials since her days in the GoGos. Sassy and assured (if not without the odd slip in the tuning department), she enjoyed herself just making music, and how nice it was to be reminded of the quality of the like of Circles In The Sand.
It was quality that the main act could have done with, because for all the razzmatazz, the abiding impression was of the paucity of Cher's material. Indeed her songs took up only a small portion of the concert, behind dancing, props and costumes in the list of priorities. There was more than a touch of Barnum's circus about it, and while some of it was hugely enjoyable - especially the storming encore of Believe, complete with trapeze artists in silver - a lot of it would have been rejected by French television for being too naff. And it got very tedious watching her television clips or listening to her rentaband while we waited for her to change. Jeans and songs as good as Belinda Carlisle's would have done fine.