Is it a weak bladder or just disrespect to the artist that allows pop audiences to roam in and out of the auditorium at will?

But then I am an old fogey and hadn't been to a pop concert in years until I dropped in to hear Alison Moyet.

I had heard her voice on radio, friends had played me the odd track and I knew she had starred in the West End production of Chicago.

So I was used to her sound. But live, she was something else. Her voice was exceptional. It was another instrument, easily moving from jazz to dance to pop and then back to ballads and a little bit of rock.

It was outrageous in its range. At times, she sounded like a classic soul singer. She shouted and roared like Shirley Bassey and was also capable of a sexy whisper.

Her songs are beautifully melancholic, bluesey and smokey. She sang of lost love, unlucky love, bad love, of love gone and love returned.

Most of her 90-minute concert was devoted to her latest album, which has been credited as the best of her career. I don't doubt it.

If You Don't Come Back To Me is a heartbreaking love song and, I guess, bound to become a standard. It is full of hurt and anger that can only come from being in the business for 20 years and taking a lot of personal traumas.

In fact, Moyet is very reminiscent of big voices such as Judy Garland and Ella Fitzgerald.

So, in spite of the amplification, which I am sure she did not need, every note, word, sob and tear was clearly registered.

That she can tell a funny story in between is the skill of a unique artist.

Her band largely played with restraint to let her voice shine through.

Her early hits, too, were not forgotten. Only You from when she was with Yazoo in the Eighties came up fresh and clean and just as plaintive.

I would have liked to have heard her sing more standards from the jazz repertoire, especially Billie Holiday's That Ole Devil Called Love, a hit for Moyet in 1985, but she did one of the most powerful interpretations of Love Letters I have ever heard.

Now she is doing her own stuff and if some don't quite have the power of the great jazz numbers, they might in the years to come. Alison Moyet is a fine, popular singer with a lifetime career in front of her.

And on the matter of those weak bladders, it wasn't really surprising.

Moyet's warm-up man was Bert Jansch, gloomy as ever, there was not one laugh from him.

No wonder the first hour of the show saw a large portion of the audience in the bar - with the resulting consequences.