Concert Review: Brighton, UK - November 13, 2002
Chris Williams:
We entered the venue at around 7pm and took our seats. We chatted a while with some 'non list' friends and then we saw Claudia Schreiber and Ilka....hope I've spelt that right .......and had a chat with them. The mixture of people in the audience was vast, young children with their parents, many around the 40+ mark and loads more around 50+ !! so we soon realized that we would have a hard job to do ahead of us when it came to getting up to dance !!!! The front row of seats was about 5 -6 meters away from the stage and the stage was pretty high....not as high as Manchester and Nottingham, but still high :-(( Suddenly at around 7:45 pm the lights went out and on came Chris....no support act this time. Guilty secret was the first song of course, and then the first surprise of the evening came !!!! I got my bottle of wine ready in my hand and sat on the edge of my seat ready to hear the first notes of 'Missing You'...and for once Stewart had left his seat to get ready to try to get a real good photo of me handing the wine to Chris....as I'm always moaning to him that he never gets a photo of me at this point ........... well what a shock when suddenly I realized that the notes we were hearing were definitely not the intro to 'Missing You'..................you should have seen Al and Dave laughing and smiling down at me as Chris started singing Living In The World !!!! What a shock !!! Then right after this song came the second surprise of the night !! Just as Chris was saying hello to everyone after this song.....a couple in the back of the hall started having a 'domestic' (argument) and the girl started walking out calling her partner a 'w....r' ..which basically is not a very nice word. Chris called out to the girl not to go and asked security to show her to the side of the stage where she could see the show better than from the back anyway. The he said 'talking about the 'w' word reminded him of the other evening when he was given an honoury Liverpool status(or something like that anyway) and a woman called out live on the radio show and said that makes you a real 'waker' now....and Chris said, I hope I heard that word right !!!!!!! Then after this he said 'if you are going to have a fight can I ask you to leave the room actually as you are upsetting the rest of the audience. We were really amazed the security was so slow to act ..that is if they even did act at all. I think that Chris dealt with this 'sudden situation' very well indeed. Then he started to sing the next song and everything calmed down. After a couple more songs he said 'if you have just arrived you haven't missed anything..well apart from a 'domestic' !!!!!!!! During 'The Best That Love Can Be' Claudia took up a lit sparkler and gave to Chris and he looked so lovely sitting right on the edge of the stage singing this song with his right hand raised right up with the glowing sparkler in it :-)) Whow Claudia..you were lucky to get away with that one !!! mind you security was not very evident as I have already said :-) Soon it was time for Revolution and everyone was still in their seats as usual, but as soon as the 'time' came to stand I was the first one up...as usual !!!!! followed by most of the first few rows. Then we all sat back down for the quiet part, which I always love. Then during the solo part yet another surprise !!! A lady walked to the front of the stage with a mobile (handy for you Germans ;-) ) phone in her hand and reached up with it to Chris and told him that her father lived in Australia and that he had tried to get tickets a couple of time to see him, and for some reason or other he hadn't and that he didn't have a clue that he was about to talk to Chris de Burgh live on stage !! Chris was brilliant here....he didn't turn the girl away but instead took the phone and started to have a conversation with this man in Australia !!! He asked him did he like Cricket .....and then talked about Ireland trashing the Australia Rugby team and a few other things. Then he asked the man what was the local beer there called and when the man said the name he asked him to say it again as he held the phone right upto the microphone........it was a real weird name and we all laughed as Chris said to the guy....'you'd have to be pretty 'pissed' to order one of those !!!!!!!!! Then he said that it had been nice taking to the man and told him 'by the way your daughter is very beautiful' !! What a bloke..again he was brilliant :-)) Then again the show got back on track and this evening in the solo he sang Carry Me, Sailing Away, Lonely sky that was a request from someone who he had chatted to while walking along the beach earlier in the afternoon, Borderline, Natasha Dance, and A Spaceman Came Travelling. Again Claudia, Ilka, myself and Stewart sang the extra 'ooh oh' bit in this song and at the end, the few of us again sang some of the song back to Chris, which he loved and thanked us for. I think he also sang 'Spanish Train' as well...........I say this as I know he sang it but can't quite remember if it was at the RAH on Tuesday or Brighton !! Then it was time for 'There Is Room In This Heart Tonight and we all got ready to go down to the front at the end of the song...........surprise number 1001 !!!!!! Instead of Nothing Ever Happens Round Here I heard the first few notes of Missing You, so I grabbed my bottle of wine from out my bag and made my way to the front of the stage..just in time :-) Just as I was giving him the wine, Al looked down at me again and gave me a great big smile as much as to say....hehehe.... he confused you this evening !!! Then suddenly Chris said 'I want you all to come down and dance in the front. So my 'jet propelled shoes' took me back to my seat to grab my bag and jacket and get back down to the front..all of about 5-6 meters !!!!! and there was still plenty of space left for people. They are very slow in Brighton as we discovered last night :-((( Soon I was dancing away to the fast songs and because there was loads of room we could really dance and not just stand there tapping our feet and clapping our hands !! Only too soon it was 'Don't Pay The Ferryman' time and very nearly the end of the show. Stewart looked back during the dancing bit and said that only the few that came down to the front where standing and dancing all the rest where still sat in their seats right to the end of the show :-( This night he did not walk along the front of the audience, but he just walked along the front of the stage bending down and shaking everybody's hands he could reach. He is a real star, the way he treats his fans :-) soon it was time to say our goodbyes to friends and walk in the pouring rain (again !!) back to the car park and start the drive home. We arrived safely home around 00:15 hrs and after a bite to eat fell into bed around 01:00 hrs totally shattered from our travellings around, but still very very 'High On Emotion'.