The blonde yelping into her mobile is dizzy with excitement. "Are you going for a drink with Will afterwards? I am!" However, she is not a giddy teen but one of the thousands of thirtysomething women that make up the Pop Idol's core audience. When their arms go up en masse before Young hits the stage, it's the most unlikely Mexican wave in pop.

He bounds on dressed as a pilot, surrounded by dancing aircraft crew. Huge cinema screens make the most of his matinee-idol looks. A stunning visual trick sees Young and two "ballerinas" pop out of giant music boxes and then revolve on the spot.

On the one hand, it's an all-singing, all-dancing spectacular. On the other, the show that is thrilling the mostly female crowd is amazingly homoerotic. A succession of costume changes, from tight trousers to frankly pornographic jodhpurs, seem designed to show off the muscle definition of Young's outrageously waggled buttocks.

Gradually, this becomes less a gig than a succession of double-entendres, some of which sail blissfully over the audience's heads. As a section of the audience scream, he quips, "You should be down the front"; Young stares downwards for a millisecond before adding, "Ooh, he's on the edge!" Meanwhile, one audience member ponders the precise nature of Young's appeal to females: "He's so cute, innee? I mean, you would, wouldn't you? If he wasn't ..." Quite.

It's a shame that the mischief doesn't feature a bit more in the music. Still, even in 2006, there's a subversive thrill to the sexual celebration of Happiness ("is being wet ... is being gay"). And Young brings a certain curious charge to Stephen Stills' free-love anthem Love the One You're With and the Doors' Light My Fire. But much of the show chugs on through the sort of anonymous, asexual 1980s white funk that blared out of wine bars when his audience were 17.

One day, Young may get the material his remarkable voice - Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, plus helium - deserves. But now, despite dips into George Michael-type ennui (notably a melancholy Very Kind), he reveals more of himself in the one-liners. There are hints of flirtations with everything from ecstasy to a shop assistant in Selfridges. It's somehow unsurprising that the show's closing credits manage to list a certain "Penelope Pistup" and (gulp) "Harry Knobbs".

· At Sheffield Arena (0114-256 5656) tomorrow. Then touring.