You don't need sequins to sparkle

The first half of what has hitherto been a sequin-bedecked dazzle actually takes place, they would have us believe this time, in their dressing rooms while they are "painting on the glitz".

Thus Fascinating Aida's current reincarnation starts sans make-up, sans sequins and adorned with sad songs of angst and triste in large amounts. They are writing a bad, but thick, romantic novel and they are talking of a Mr Springer who runs a bad television show and they are feeling homesick on a long tour (in Epsom, for Heaven's sake, or Barnstaple or Croydon even?) and admiring the one true religion (one's self in tranquil oriental environments) and then, called on stage while examining the little lines in the make-up mirror, they are into what for us is the second half.

And it's as if they've just started and still not a sequin in sight: they're all in velvet and they're kissing and telling, and they're doing some knockabout on the piste while Britain's first ever heavy smoker is discovering the difference between tobacco and Tabasco. Then they're singing in praise of wimps or they're singing a melancholic cynical Viennese love-song and even one valiantly unsuccessful true love-song to Tom - and that's when they're not knocking the new middle-class New Labour (UK) political correctness - and then they get ever so delicately lewd and then, just as it's all to end, they sing of sewing on sequins again. And in a tour which gives even Leeds two nights and Singapore the best part of a week, that's their lot in Dublin!

It's outrageous, and nigh on an abrogation of Dubliners' basic rights. Ms Keane, Ms Anderson and Ms Cutts, aided and abetted by Sarah Travis and other conspirators, yiz have a barefaced cheek. Could ye not come back for a whole weekend? We need more of you.