YOU could not have asked for a much better night to go to an outdoor gig than we had for the Bryan Adams show at the Ageas Bowl.

It was a beautiful summers evening with most of the crowd looking relaxed in shorts and t-shirt which all added to a great atmosphere.

Considering I caught this show fifteen months ago in Bournemouth when it was the Get Up 2016 tour I arrived expecting a well rehearsed and polished evening and was not disappointed.

To be honest the Bowl was not the best set up for a concert venue with the cricket pitch in the middle of the ground fenced off so it seemed you were either within 20 yards of the stage, 120 yards away or funnelled to the sides. Still nothing was going to stop the crowd from enjoying themselves.

The Dunwells were up first and sounded great supplying a set of tunes not far removed from the sound of Adams himself. After a quick turn around it was time for the man himself.

We were promised some new songs, old songs, really new songs and some really really old songs and although the greatest reactions were kept for the latter there was not a lull in the perfectly paced show for the entire two hours.

Opening the night with Do What You Gotta Do the set list was part latest album and part greatest hits, the side screens and video backdrop worked really well especially when showing the promo videos of the songs themselves.

The Adams/Walliams collaboration on Don’t Even Try and the incredibly young looking Adams in the original video for This Time were excellent additions to the stage show.

Adam’s voice and the guitar playing of long time collaborator Keith Scott are still the perfect combination, none more so than on the Really, Really Old songs like Cuts Like a Knife, Run To You, Heaven and Summer of 69 that would have raised the roof if there had been one.

An acoustic version of When Your Gone was followed by an extended version of Everything I Do (I Do It For You), which predictably received one of the biggest reactions of the night.

An encore of Brand New Day and some rock and roll classics closed the show on a high note and left a happy crowd making their way home on an almost perfect summers evening.