Barry

I am not a Barry fan and I’m still not. A good friend is a big fan; she even has a signed t-shirt.

For her birthday, her husband bought her 2 tickets for a Barry Manilow concert in the O2 arena. No one in their family wanted to go with her so her husband asked me to go and I went.

I was super surprised by the number of teenagers and young couples there, sitting alongside all the oldies. I was super surprised by the energy of the dancing audience. I was super surprised by his very plastic face - almost a fixed face - but I was not super surprised by him.

He has a great voice, incredible for a 75 year old. But at one point, he asked what other 75 year olds we knew were doing - he suggested that the most most 75 year olds could manage was to cough up phlegm, but here he was, fit and dancing around for us .... :-(

He also had a melt down, in front of the thousands, with unpleasant expletives pouring out of his mouth. :-(

In the photo, he was singing a duet with a younger Barry Manilow. At one point, we all had to sing “We love you Barry Manilow”.

Most importantly, my fiend loved it and I loved watching her love it. :-)

I preferred though, the other end of the day, the beginning, watching NoaNoa play football with his Godmother (who was also watching, not playing) although our team were utterly thrashed.