Jersey Evening Post - February 11, 2002

by Louise Gibbs

transcription by Chris Williams


That's Entertainment


WHEN I heard that Chris de Burgh was coming to Jersey, I privately wondered
which telephone box the event would be held in. Actually, a packed Fort Regent was the
venue for what was described by promoters On Stage Events as an intimate evening
with Chris de Burgh, and anywhere smaller would have been a mistake. It isn't
often, apparently, that Mr de Burgh gives a solo performance, and the crowd who had
turned out to see him perform weren't about to miss it for anything, not even the Pop
Idol final, which, coincidentally, decided the fate of Will and Gareth as 2,000
people at the Fort sat listening to a proper musician.

Superb I'm probably going to lose every friend I have ever made by admitting that I
had a superb evening, but a singer/songwriter, piano player, guitar player and
entertainer is a rare sight these days, and when they have a voice which makes even 
the highest notes sound like they can be lifted through the air with no effort, you 
know you are witnessing a musician with true talent at work. Perhaps the biggest 
surprise at all was that women were not rushing the stage wearing red dresses. In fact, 
the fairer sex didnot out-number the men by a large margin. For one couple at least, 
the evening out was made all the more special because they had travelled from London, 
while on holiday there from Massachussetts, to see Chris de Burgh. 'We checked his
website, saw there was a concert in Jersey and flew over,' said Peter Reneghan, who was
attending his first ever Chris de Burgh concert with his wife Betsy. For them,
the evening had added significance because Lady In Red was their wedding song, and
they were able to meet Chris de Burgh before he went on stage. The man himself was on
some-thing of a whistlestop tour, and was experiencing his second taste of
island life in one day, having flown in from Guernsey, or as he called it thoughout the
evening, 'the island shrouded in mist.' For him, he said, coming back to Jersey was a
homecoming because his father was born here, but he was more used to associating Jersey
with golf than his singing career.

Audience
So onto the music. All the beautiful songs for which he is so well known were
there, but this was not an ego evening. The audience were treated to, among others, the
Lennon-McCartney hit Let It Be, American Pie and Without You, a song which, Chris
de Burgh observed, Mariah Carey had put more notes into than had just gone missing
from the Allied Irish Bank. But it was his songs that the crowd were there to hear, and
he did not disappoint them. A Space-man Came Travelling, In A Country Churchyard,
Lady In Red, Don't Pay The Ferryman and of course, Patricia The Stripper were all 
there, and if he thought he was getting away without an encore, he was wrong. After
being welcomed back to the stage to a standing ovation, Chris de Burgh bowed to a
demand for more with a rendition of High On Emotion and Hey Jude, turning the
microphone towards the audience and waving before he made his way from the
stage. Getting an international recording star to Jersey cannot have been an easy task
for promoters On Stage Events, and they are to be congratulated on bringing over
such a professional musician who had the ability to bring that rare commodity of
talent and atmosphere to the Gloucester Hall.