There's a warning for fans at the doors of the O2 Arena, and it demonstrates that artistry is not the main thing they go to see Rod Stewart for: "Footballs will be kicked into the audience during this performance." And, during Hot Legs, it comes to pass: ball after ball is booted out, fans of an age far beyond that at which having a football is likely to be of any practical use – beyond playing with the grandkids – leaping for them. This is Stewart distilled to his purest form: entertainment before artistry, rock'n'roll as panto.
That he can pull off a show in which the sublime sits alongside the second-rate is dependent on his likely-lad charm: you want to be appalled when he advises an all-woman, all-miniskirted string section to "keep your legs together, girls", but it comes across more like a seaside postcard than an awful old lecher. And when he brings his two youngest sons on, in Celtic kits, to dance along to Sweet Little Rock'n'Roller, it's charming rather than sentimental.
That gravelly, morning-after voice, though, is a problem. Stewart says he has had a virus for six weeks, and he fears his voice might give out. He actively encourages the audience to take over from him on Maggie May, You Wear It Well and I Don't Want to Talk About It, and the thousands-strong choir somehow makes the latter more moving, even with the words wielded more as blunt instrument than rapier. But during The Killing of Georgie (Part I and II) he struggles to keep up, the words are drowned beneath the band, and the story of a homophobic murder becomes a babble.
Presumably Stewart plays this set – perfunctory covers alongside masterly interpretations; mediocre self-penned numbers alongside wonderful displays of his command of melody and lyric – because he knows what his audience wants. But it's impossible not to wonder why he doesn't cherry-pick more carefully: it would be easy to compose a two-hour show filled with great songs from his past – there's no Mandolin Wind tonight, no I'd Rather Go Blind, no Stay With Me, no Handbags and Gladrags – especially as these were the ones that made him a superstar on both sides of the Atlantic. They're not exactly obscurities.
But even as Baby Jane and Sailing – two No 1 hits that had Stewart-deniers gritting their teeth – roll around the arena, it's impossible to deny: even at his most blatantly populist, Rod Stewart knows a tune, and he knows how to sell one.
