Billy Joel @ M.E.N. Arena

WITH 16,000 sweaty souls eagerly awaiting his arrival, Billy Joel didn’t exactly need a cheerleader.

But he got one anyway in the cuddly shape of Peter Kay, the Bolton funnyman making good on his promise to attend all of Joel’s first UK dates for 12 years.

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It was Kay - sitting just yards from the stage - who urged the crowd to their feet, clapping enthusiastically and mouthing the words to every song.

“Peter Kay’s here,” Joel declared. “Whaddya got, a private jet? How do you get to all these gigs.”

Kay yelled back that he only lived 20 minutes away.

Joel never was much of a pop star in the usual sense. Songs like Angry Young Man, My Wife, and The Entertainer seem as if some stubby bloke in a stage musical has just leapt up to tell you his life in song.

Broadway

Little wonder that 24 of those songs have already been recycled into a Broadway show.

That stubby bloke is still well in touch with his history has a lounge pianist.

The songs were always a bit too polished, a bit too cabaret.

But they are for Joel to critics’ praise as well as the 100 million record sales.

It’s just that timeless, old fashioned sound, which means that Joel’s songs scrub up so fresh for 2006.

Just The Way You Are

Not that he is precious about his repertoire, wise-cracking that he will ’throw up’ if he has to sing one more ’mushy’ song Just The Way You Are. (‘written for my first ex-wife’).

The Entertainer is dripped with cynicism for the entertainment business Joel had only just entered when he wrote it in 1974. But he was wrong on one score.

“And I won’t be here in another year if I don’t stay on the charts,” he sang.

The truth is, he is packing them in like last night having delivered not a single new pop song to a waiting world since 1993.

You suspect that many of last night’s crowd had waited almost that long for this gig.

In June 1998, Joel cancelled an appearance at Lancashire County Cricket Club because of a respiratory infection. It’s taken this long for him to get back to the city.

On the hottest night of this and many other years, the Piano Man was making good on one of the longest rainchecks in rock history.

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