The build-up to the arrival of the headliners at this gig gave the aura of a climatic event.

Two support bands and an inexorable stream of big-screen adverts for High Street stores, rival chart acts and general celebrity culture kept the bunny-hatted throngs in suspense.

It was certainly a far loftier sense of occasion than they usually experience watching their heroes on Saturday morning television.

Explaining the artifice of opener Laura Critchley would have been like revealing the truth about Santa Claus to her young admirers, such was her apparent commitment to the cause of cringeworthy lyrics about growing up, dating and very little in between.

Somehow her band - consisting of a keyboard player and acoustic guitarist - managed to conjure drumming, electric guitar solos and the sort of complexities only a backing track could achieve.

It stood to reason, then, that most of her set was mimed.

Dragonette were rockier in a kind of mock No Doubt way which oozed the requisite guileless cheek but it still felt like a long wait by the time the 'Babes arrived. They did so in a quite bewildering blaze of lights, fronted by gigantic LED screens which were deployed for everything from intricate visuals to footage of the girls and pleas to end Third World poverty.

The highlight came early on when the latest member of the revolving trio, Amelle Berrabah, described the set as a chance for fans to hear "good and bad songs" from their back catalogue, a slip she was regrettably quick to apologise for.

Management may have been gnashing their teeth but the fun continued at a brisk pace. Their past and present is, after all, little short of pop perfection with the early promise of tracks such as Overload realised in modern stompers such as Round Round and Red Dress.

Delivered with consummate sassiness and vocal ability, they left the pop-picking public feeling the anticipation had been worth it.