REVIEW: David Essex 'I'll Be Missing You Tour', Southampton Mayflower Theatre

By Hilary Porter

IT was a bitter-sweet night for thousands of David Essex fans in Southampton last night as he performed to a packed Mayflower Theatre on his last ever tour.

More than 40 years since Rock On when he won over an army of adoring fans who have stayed loyal through the decades,he was back for his first tour in four years as a final "thank you" to them.

"All good things must come to an end," he said.

The blue-eyed, tousled-haired heart-throb whose face once graced millions of poster-covered bedroom walls will hit his 70th birthday next year but no one was counting as he delivered a crowd-pleasing show, crammed with career-spanning hits and favourite songs the fans had requested on Twitter. And it sounded as good as ever!

There is a well-trodden etiquette at a David Essex concert where he- also a big theatre star, sings a line and the fans all make the same response. So when the theatrical, cockney charmer sang 'If I Could' with the line "If I give you my Life, Will You be my wife?" the response from around 2,300 voices was a booming "Yes!", even after all these years.

Pausing to sip from a cup of tea he told them: "I've really been looking forward to this. It's always lovely coming to Southampton- it's one of my favourite places."

Another early 70's hit followed with 'Lamplight' and then came All the Fun of the Fair, the soundtrack of both an album and the show that he wrote.

The huge hit Hold Me Close saw the fans singing along swiftly followed by Oh What a Circus , taken from the stage show Evita that he starred in.

One of the biggest Christmas songs followed, Winter's Tale, written in the early 80's by Mike Batt for David who joked: "I've a feeling you will be wandering around Lidl and will hear this!"

Stardust taken from the film he starred in, which closely mirrored his own life and the madness of the early teen idol days, was, like many tracks, accompanied by film footage that took us all down Memory Lane.

After introducing his brilliant, long-term four-piece band the epic hit Rock On followed along with Imperial Wizard - a 1976 hit that he commented "seems strangely relevant today".

A real high spot came with Gonna Make you a Star and Silver Dream Machine before the encore of parting tracks: Here We are All Together, It's Gonna Be Alright and 'I'll Be Missing You'.

We are missing him already!