Anybody who puts Girls Aloud in the same bracket as Atomic Kitten or Westlife hasn't been listening properly.

They (or their producers, depending on how cynical you are) have been responsible for some of the millennium's most sublime pop moments.

Tonight they proved that, as long as you have the tunes, you can get away with almost anything - including two Brian May hairstyles and a costume department borrowed from Eurotrash.

With a stage set based on an endearingly self-deprecating "mad scientist" theme, the show felt like a big-budget panto. An opening salvo of Biology's glorious bubblegum blues, No Good Advice, Waiting and Love Machine set the tone for a relentlessly and irresistibly upbeat two hours.

The breakneck pace was plainly designed to ensnare even the shortest of attention spans and it succeeded.

Perfectly choreographed, the girls threw in a cover of I Predict A Riot, a medley of tracks from Fame, Flashdance and Footloose, and a host of costume and set changes.

They will always be more than the sum of their parts - only Cheryl Tweedy seemed to have the voice, moves and audience banter to make it solo.

Of the others, one of Nadine's outfits made her look like she had just stepped off a Christmas cake, Nicola seemed to be having a bad hair day, both literally and metaphorically, and Kimberley was pretty much a passenger.

But even closing with their cover of the Pointer Sisters' Jump, a song almost as pointless as the film which it soundtracked, couldn't ruin the night.