Rod Stewart has made a career out of being the pop-star-next-door. He's a football fan who can sing, a fiftysomething who happens to pull young birds.

And then asks them to appear on stage. At this Albert Hall show, in aid of the Prince's Trust, Stewart mixes politics and patriotism with Playboy as only he can, dedicating the plastic soul of Rhythm of My Heart to "our boys in Iraq". Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Penny Lancaster, takes to the stage wearing a bum-skimming tartan mini-skirt and clutching bagpipes she doesn't try to play. As she slowly ascends a neon staircase, an image of the union flag appears on a screen above her. "She's a lovely sort," purrs Stewart, coming over all Alfie. "From Chigwell."

It's his everyman guise that stops this one-off gig - filmed for television and hosted by Dame Edna Everage - becoming a squirming piece of showbiz. Instead, the atmosphere is amazing, the crowd waving scarves to the winking machismo of Hot Legs and the turgid swan song, Sailing. Stewart plays 29 songs, but rarely stops wiggling his hips like a lap dancer determined to make the rent.

Though it's his first show at the Albert Hall, he's not about to stand on ceremony. "Why the fuck are you so late?" he asks people edging their way to their seats. He lambasts America's treatment of Cat Stevens, before admitting: "I don't like the outfits he wears these days."

Then the swing kicks in. "I'm plugging the album," Stewart tells us, not a little ashamed. "The album" is his third instalment of The Great American Songbook, and he shows the classic songs little mercy.

Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World is banal; As Time Goes By, meanwhile, is enlivened only by the appearance of Chrissie Hynde on stage. Even Stewart seems keen to get this section of the show over with. Swapping his tuxedo for a garish yellow jacket, and with Ronnie Wood alongside him, he tears into Maggie May before wallowing in Motown. He's no Sinatra - but Stewart being Stewart is good enough.