Guilty feet: George Michael struts his stuff at Wembley. Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
Getting a taxi to the new Wembley Stadium at 3pm on Saturday, the driver enquired why I was going so early, and who the support act was. To which I replied, it's me Colonel. I was playing pop records with Sean Rowley's Guilty Pleasures before George Michael. The cabbie's advice was to include Dexys' Come On Eileen in our set as "that always gets them going".
We were still deciding which record should be played first right up to the last minute. Most suggestions from Thursday's blog were from Live Aid: Rocking All Over the World or a Queen record. Thing is, when you are looking out over 90,000 empty seats it didn't seem appropriate to play something so histrionic. So when the doors opened at 4.45pm and scores of women - some in faded 80s Wham! T's, others holding tubs of Revels - ran to the front of the stage we played, Barbra Streisand's Guilty. Considering George's plea in court the previous day it seemed appropriate.
After a handful of records we left the stage for an hour while a documentary about George was screened. When we returned the stadium was nearly full and we took our place behind our mobile disco set up and Sean announced our intentions to entertain over the PA. Looks of amusement soon turned to bemusement when we brought our dancers on - two blokes dressed in bear suits and a couple of mates fresh back from Ibiza with mirror balls affixed to their heads. It looked like something out of the Mighty Boosh watched by an audience of My Family viewers.
We soon found ourselves piloting a lead balloon that even A-ha's Take on Me couldn't save from crash landing. The crowd had come for one thing: they wanted Fast Love and the quicker they got it the better. The bears left with their tails between their legs, and so did we as we joined the audience in the "golden circle" to watch the show.
George Michael's performance was as slick as his beard is trimmed, the music as buffed to perfection as the backing singers' torsos. It featured hits from his Wham! days and something from each of his solo albums. He wore an American cop uniform to recreate his Outside video as a helicopter circled overhead while the political point of Shoot the Dog was overegged when a huge inflatable Tony Blair holding the Statue of Liberty torch popped up. The peerless Faith, I'm Your Man and Careless Whisper concluded the set and Wembley's cherry was truly broken.
I left to hail a cab and thought, Perhaps I should have taken the earlier drivers advice and played Come On Eileen?
