For years, one of rock's most unfair, intractable rules stated that the children of stars were doomed to failure. A moment in the spotlight, endless questions about your parent, then thanks, but no thanks: such was the lot of Julian Lennon, Ziggy Marley and Emma Townshend.
Clearly no one told Enrique Iglesias, preposterously handsome son of leathery lothario Julio. He has shifted 30m albums worldwide, snatching Ricky Martin's Latin superstar crown with a nonchalance that says: Julio wholio?
The people behind Iglesias Jr's success are here in force. They are dressed to the nines, 10 years older than your average teenybopper, and have come for the same reasons their mothers attended gigs by Iglesias Sr: to scream and ogle. Indeed, some of them have brought their mothers, who have their fingers in their ears yet still appear to be having the night of their lives. It is as if you have stumbled across an attempt to break the world's biggest hen-night record.
Iglesias talks about his music and how his band are the "best players in the world", but you suspect he knows why most of the audience have turned up. He humps the stage, breathes heavily into his microphone and caresses his crotch while furrowing his brow.
A smattering of dutiful boyfriends wear expressions suggesting a temporary collapse of the will to live. Iglesias has a message for them. "A lotta guys won't come to see Enrique because they think it's cissy," he notes. "There's a word for that - insecurity." Well, perhaps. Or perhaps a lotta guys have concluded that watching a man croon AOR ballads while touching his private parts is not for them.
Iglesias can certainly croon. During an acoustic interlude, he unleashes a falsetto hair-raising enough to bring every dog in London to heel. But whether his voice is employed on cantering Latin pop, a cover of Prince's Purple Rain, or stadium rock Phil Collins would reject as too anodyne, not a note dispels the notion that music is a secondary consideration here. It gives Iglesias something to thrust his pelvis to, then excuses itself without leaving a trace in the memory.
The only thing that lingers is the thought that if Iglesias looked like Johnny Vegas, no one would be here at all.
