Grown-up boyband's greatest day yet

TAKE THAT call it The Circus Tour, but, if anything, calling it a circus is an understatement.

Part music concert, but for the most part theatrical extravaganza /cabaret/burlesque, the boy to manband put on a show that will hardly be surpassed by any act headlining Croke Park, not even U2 who play the venue next month.

Take That emerged on stage from beneath a cascade of balloons and surrounded by an entourage of clowns, ballerinas and dancers on a wooden oil derrick.

It was evident from the beginning they were going to, in the words of one of their own songs, Take That and Party and then some.

"I just want to say 'wow'. We never thought we'd be this big," said singer Howard Donald, reflecting how this seemingly washed-up Nineties boy band have morphed into one of the biggest live draws in the world a decade later.

All 80,000 tickets for Saturday night's concert sold out when they went on sale last October.

"This is a very special night," said chief songwriter Gary Barlow, the brains behind the Take That phenomenon. "80,000 people. This is the biggest crowd we have ever played to. Thank you."

The audience, like the band themselves, were of a certain maturity, composed overwhelming of twenty- and thirty-something women who enjoyed a perfect summer's evening for the concert.

As a traditional male bastion, Croke Park had to be made fit for purpose. Every male toilet that could be was turned from Fir to Mná, but even that wasn't enough to accommodate the gender imbalance and dozens of portaloos were brought in for the occasion.

The show was bookended by Greatest Dayand Rule the World, two huge hits from their latest incarnation.

In between they rolled out the hits one after the other.

In keeping with the circus theme, there were acrobats, clowns, burlesque dancers, majorettes, marching bands, tight-rope walkers and unicycles.

Every circus needs an elephant and the 15-metre high mechanical elephant was the pièce de résistance.

The elephant emerged from centre-stage and the band were borne from the stage in the centre of the pitch to the front like Indian maharajahs surveying their supplicants. Two dancers waggled the elephant's ears and a dancer hung off the end upside-down swishing its tail.

It was all so uproariously, preposterously over the top and the crowd loved it, joining in a verse of The Fields of Athenryprompted by four Manchester lads who are as English as YR Sauce.

High drama turned to low farce when singer Mark Owen split his trousers from crotch to knees. "I'm not taking my trousers off, right?" "Off, off, off," the crowd responded.

Owen revealed that the Take That entourage consisted of 238 people and by the end it everyone of them seemed to be on stage. The band signed off with a firework display.

"I've seen them five times and this was the best ever. What a show," said Sorca O'Brien from Tallaght. Few would disagree.