WHAT person in their right mind would have, three years ago, given Boyzone a snowball's chance in hell of success? Yet here they were last night in the first of two sell out concerts, singing to a capacity crowd who knew the words to every song.

You could tell it was a Boyzone concert because everyone over the age of 25 was either a parent or a chaperone, the bemused looks on their faces perusing the madness of it all from the safety of maturity.

Boyzone have most definitely arrived in the land of pop super stardom. In a medium where music matters the least, the Dublin five piece are kings of all they survey. The fans loved everything about the show, needless to say from the many hit singles and the album tracks to the bad and perplexing version of She Moved Through The Fair, which saw Boyzone unwisely adopting the trappings of all things Celtic and falling flat on their shiny leather trousers. But when they stuck to the basic formula it was plain sailing.

The show inevitably had an assured quality about it all superb stage production values, as in lighting and pop choreography. The music was also slickly produced, beefed up somewhat by the presence of real live musicians, but really, the music was of minor importance. Occasionally engaging and hummable, Boyzone rely too much on the mediocrity of modern pop values for their actual songs to merit more than just cursory approval.

That said, Boyzone deserve their success more than most. Hard work, a lot of luck, astute management and a stubborn need to achieve have made them what they are a premier teen pop band. Enjoy them before their fans grow up.