Oh Barry what has happened?
WITH pulse racing and adrenalin pumping, I high-tailed it to the O2 on Saturday night to see Barry Manilow in concert.
I was expecting glitz, glamour, show girls, wall-towall unforgettable songs we all know and love and Barry at his brilliant best. I got four rather moth-eaten backing singers doubling up as dancers, what seemed like hours of anaemic new numbers no-one had ever heard of, much less gave a fig for, and giant screens showing agonisingly enlarged close-ups of what remains of Barry’s face. The poor fellow has succumbed Michael Jackson-style to far too many flurries of the surgeon’s knife.
The toxic mixture of lifts, Botox and fillers gives him a wax-work boat race like a melted candle. When, in a rasping whisper, he attempted I Can’t Smile Without You, even the audience of die-hard fans had to acknowledge that, sadly, Mr Manilow can’t smile at all.