The curtain hiding the stage is a projection screen saying ‘PRINCE’. Then it changes and says something like ‘FUNKnROLL’ in a chunky font. The curtain drops and Prince is doing a ‘funked up’ version of lets go crayzee. He’s wearing a lycra version of Sarah Millicans bafta dress and the crowd are like that, ‘yay! nice dress’

The crowd. The crowd are a mixed bunch. Quite a few are #angrybirds generation. I’m in the standing bit and there is a hipster dad-dancing in front of me. I try to ignore this. The hydro is impressive. The tiered seating is filled with the usual collection of lazy bastards, the obese, and OAPs.

I can see the purple fairy fairly well. He’s looking good for a guy his age. Most other male 55 year olds in the hydro that night look like shit, a lifetime of bacon rolls, fags, booze and disappointment etched into their faces. The nostalgia whores wear UKIP purple because the PR team asked them to via an email.

The sound. The sound system in the hydro is shit. The levels are all wrong. Bass and keyboard are lost forever in a miasma of high-note guitar wailing. The backing singer is inaudible.

We are told we cant use our smartphones. There’s a couple of heavy duty guys on stage shining a torch at anyone taking photos. People are dragged from the audience for taking photos/video/multimedia shareable content. We stand by, tut and do nothing. The hipster dad-dancing observes and does nothing. We all do nothing as brothers, sisters, facebook friends, twitter followers and linkedin influencers are led off by security to be punished by an irate 5"2 Prince after the show.

About an hour into the show i get a horrible feeling that the sheer volume and speed at which the lavender pop overlord is knocking out ‘the hits’ is losing the audience. Covers of Tom Jones’s Kiss and bald Irish woman singer Sinead O’Connors’ Nothing Compares 2 U seem like odd choices. My faith in the purple yoda begins to wobble.

Then the lilac throbber plays another couple of old school covers — ‘play that funky music’ and ‘live it up’. I’m not expecting cheesy covers but it seems to do the trick with the audience. He gets some chumps up on stage. They seem happy enough to be on the meds and out of day care and shoogle away behind the wee man. Princes transformation into early 90s faker Lenny Kravitz seems complete.

Things i missed. There was no dry-humping or grinding of the stage, no running about the stage like a randy wee jack russell, there was no ball breaking leg splits being done. There was plenty of guitar solo curled lips, closed eyes, and head thrown back bits, which was good. There was no Sexy MF.

Show was over at 11, half an hour early. Me and my pal leave a wee bit disappointed, and concur it wasn’t a patch on his Parkhead gig 22 years earlier when he wasn’t so retro, and when he ran about like a dafty and had a floating bed on stage.