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I was lucky enough to be in the audience for the opening concert of Take That’s Beautiful World tour last night, at the Odyssey Arena in Belfast. As a massive and long serving Take That fan, I have been anticipating this concert for months, I even booked standing tickets so that I could get closer to the stage, or in truth, closer to Howard Donald.

I knew that I wouldn’t be disappointed by the boys, as long as they showed up and looked rugged enough, the £90 I shelled out on tickets would have been money well spent. True to form though, the boys didn’t just look the part, they sang the part, danced the part and performed the part. It was an amazing show, I think I even enjoyed it more that their 2005 comeback tour. Though I have to admit feeling my age when they started singing snippets of songs from the Take That and Party Album, even more so when I realised that I remembered most of the dance routines to Everything Changes and Pray.

But last night’s concert wasn’t a typical TT concert in many ways. Firstly I was surprised to find that Howard, (the really handsome one) took on a much larger singing role than he normally enjoys. In fact at one point it was mentioned that the band have been inundated with requests for Howard and Gary Barlow to perform a duet. They of course obliged and we ended up with a great version of Everything Changes.

Another shocker was Jason Orange’s solo, the first in seventeen years of his musical career. Jason took to the stage with a few band members playing strings and gave a heart wrenching performance of Wooden Boat, a track from the Beautiful World album. He was obviously s****ing his pants and hardly opened his eyes during the whole song. I couldn’t say he is an amazing singer, but he was good and the emotion portrayed during his performance was actually really moving. Jason got an amazing response from the crowd, but he just looked glad that the ordeal was over with.

I was glad that this tour isn’t just going to be a rerun of the last. Of course all our old Take That favourites were played, but the show also focused heavily on the new album. The audience loved Shine, Patience and Rule The World as much as any of the classics, and it was fantastic to see them performed live.

The stage show was also slightly more subdued, and dare I say it….mature! Don’t worry, there was fire ( I thought Mark, Jason and Gary were very brave to actually have it spouting out of their shoes, hands and hat!), of course there were videos used, fabulous dancers and many props, but most of last nights show focused on the performing, the singing and the music.

If nothing else, last nights show proved to me that Take That are going to be around for a while. They aren’t having to rely purely on their old songs (and even older fans!) to fill their concert halls. Last nights show had significantly more younger and obviously newer fans than the 2005 tour. The band seem to have recaptured their universal appeal, and their new material is as strong as the old. If they can produce another album, and more tracks like Rule The World, I fully expect to be sitting here in 1-2 years time, writing about the next Take That concert. I just hope that Howard manages to retain his good looks for that long……..