You can tell James Blunt has had Army training. Just look at his ability to blend into musical mediocrity - he is indeed a master of camouflage.

Okay, so he may have had a hit single which spent longer at the top than Edmund Hillary but when even the Black Eyed Peas start to take the mickey out of your lyrics (and they wrote a song about breasts), you know someone has been fiddling with the target sights, with the general public seemingly coerced into accepting something miraculous which really isn't there.

Projecting a stage presence which channels Tony Blair's long-buried dreams of rock stardom ("Erm, I, well, love coming to Brighton"), Blunt constantly appeared to be both bemused and worryingly smug about his meteoric rise to fame.

In a gig which stretched out his ten-song debut album back catalogue with a couple of new additions, there were thankfully a couple of gems to be gleaned.

Most notable were the likes of the jaunty So Long Jimmy and the castrato High, played with a bit of oomph from the talented band. But it was in the crowd-pleasing renditions of Goodbye My Lover and You're Beautiful, a single which should have been released shrinkwrapped with a sick bag, that the cult of Blunt truly became apparent.

You see, his popularity lies in the fact he's the aural equivalent of a vanilla ice cream and diazepam enema - bland, relaxing and apparently cleansing.

He's Adam to Dido's Eve, a prescriptive for the my-life's-a-bit-rubbish blues, a temazepam troubadour - well you get the point.

His millennial musings may speak to those who have swapped waving lighters for holding up their camera phones but for those who prefer a little more substance, his inoffensiveness borders on the offensive.

Don't believe it? Picture the scene: A piano, a spotlight, the song No Bravery and a huge projection screen showing the singer's videotape footage of his time in Kosovo during the conflict.

Manipulative or heart-stoppingly moving? Make your decision, cross that line in the sand and know which side you are on. From this reviewer's point of view, and to be Blunt, he's just not very good.