Those are three tour t-shirts I once owned which, alongside the mighty Glasgow Apollo, featured impossibly exotic venues like Leicester's De Montford Hall, The Hammersmith Odeon, the Royal Concert Hall at Nottingham and tonight's auditorium; St George's Hall, Bradford.
Blimey.
When I were a lad, I thought the Appalling (as it was known locally) was what concert halls were like. In reality, it was a 1920s cinema (the biggest in the country - it sat four thousand customers) converted for concert use, but the Glasgow audience earned it the reputation of the greatest gig in the world - AC/DC, Rush, Quo, Gary Moore all chose it to record their live albums.
Oh lordy (or, indeed, Lordi); what would we have done in a place like St George's Hall? What must it have been like to see Maiden in their 80s prime at a wonderful, compact, standing venue?
I never thought I'd say it, but I'm a bit jealous.
Someone else who must've visited the Apollo once or twice is following in the footsteps of Rock's elite tonight and, just as they probably did for the World Piece Tour, the "Sold Out" signs are on the doors as we approach the 150-year-old venue. At the Apollo, he'd have been awarded a "Sold Right Out" golden statuette; I suspect Frankie Boyle, unlike Johnny Cash who famously left his in the dressing room bin, would have treasured such a trophy.
Warm-up act Martin Bigpig is a revelation; a big, loud, bearded bloke from Norn Iron who reminds me of Billy Connolly in his younger days - a very enthusiastic, very offensive, very funny guy who sets the bar (and the cursemeter) at just the right height for the headliner. His handling of the would-be gatecrasher and the ineffectual bouncer was absolutely fantastic.
Regular readers will know that I've been lucky enough to catch several of my favourite comedians over the last couple of years. Tonight is the first time, though, that I've actually been nervous to the point of fear before a show. Frankie gets away with murder on Mock The Week; just what is he going to be like without censorship?
We soon find out as Shannon Matthews and the sainted Madeleine (or rather, the two girls' families) become the focus of prolonged, uncomfortable but, yes, hilarious attacks.
The "C" word is bandied about with such abandon that it loses its shock value but it is the material between the deliberately offensive punctuation where Frankie demonstrates his talent as a wordsmith and raconteur.
Quite simply, the guy is one of the funniest ****s you'll ever see.
There's some familiar stuff from Mock The Week, but most of the material (maybe 75%?) is fresh (or at least unfamiliar - some of the "topical" subjects are starting to get a bit mouldy - the Josef Fritzl stuff, for example).
Audience participation is good though he didn't have much to work with. Complaints? An hour and a quarter is a bit short, no encore is a bit poor and that NCP carpark took forever (well, about 45 minutes) to get out of.
A good night.
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