Depending on where you stand on lovestruck melodies wrung throatily out across slicker-thanslick production, Michael Bolton is one of those artists you either love, hate or diplomatically ignore.

Unless you subscribe to one of the numerous excitable fan sites or benefit from one of the many local and national charities whose funds are bolstered by the workings of Michael Bolton Charities Inc, it has, over the past decade, become increasingly easy to do the latter.

But now Bolton is back, touring the UK for the first time in ten years in support of 'Til The End Of Forever, a new live album packing 11 of his greatest hits alongside new studio recordings.

Best known for turning in highly-wrought covers of those pop and soul numbers deemed definitive in their original form, this soft rock balladeer actually began his musical life as a hard rock singer, performing under his real name Michael Bolotin with the heavy metal band Blackjack, who made two albums for Polydor in the late Seventies and toured with Ozzy Osbourne.

In 1983 Bolton changed his name, signed to Columbia as a solo act, and re-launched his career.

Since then the singer has made over 52 million sales worldwide, winning two Grammys and six American Music Awards for hits such as 1987's That's What Love Is All About and, perhaps most famously, the 1991 cover of Percy Sledge's classic soul track When A Man Loves A Woman, for which he garnered his second Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Bolton, even post-mullet, has also come in for his fair share of stick most notably at this very awards ceremony, when Irving Gordon, accepting his own award, made pointed remarks about "unforgettable" performers who "scream, yell, and have a hernia" when they sing.

But as the singer knows full well (the new album sleeve pictures him inserting a red rose into a competeting crowd of outstretched fingertips), Bolton's faithful fans are ever-ready to do battle.

In the words of one Amazon poster: "All of you player-haters just stop hating on this handsome hunk of talent and just let the man do his thing."

Starts at 7.30pm, tickets cost £37.50. Call 0870 900 9100.