A joy-soaked, life-celebrating evening with the greatest pop group on the planet.

Take That’s 9th album “This Life” came along at exactly the time I needed it. In November 2023, I had been through one of the worst years of my life. It was exactly a year since my Dad died, and I’d spent the ensuing months in a tangle of grief, legal complexities and distress at the ongoing deterioration of my Mum, leading me to something of a breakdown. When the album came out on the 24th of November, I was coming to the end of a month of sick leave from work, during which I’d made decent progress towards becoming a functional human being again.

And now, one of my all time favourite bands released an album which somehow expressed all the pain I’d been going through, and the light that was maybe now appearing on the horizon to guide me out. As the gorgeous lead single “Windows” put it: “I’ve been through a year of madness, replaced my hope with sadness, found waking up the hardest… but you opened up, opened up my windows.” Never before has a band I love released a single that made me feel quite so strongly that they had peered into my brain and written about what they saw.

Five months later and the boys were on tour for the album. The strong emotional impact that the songs had had on me meant that this, the seventh Take That gig of my life, was already significant before I even got to the O2. Once there, the overriding sense of a Big Event was electric. I noted in my diary:

‘You know, it just felt so special, striding up to the O2, the long wall by the walkway all done up with huge TT posters from over the ages, the stairs up to the shopping mall inside hosting a brass band playing TT hits, the dedicated merch shop, it all made it feel like such an Event.’

After enjoying the brass band and perusing the merch shop for a while, I went into the arena via the O2 priority lane. I got myself a programme, and then did the teetering walk of vertigo down the stairs to the floor to find my seat. Once there I was thoroughly happy with it: the back row of a front block, with a great view of the main stage and very close to the B stage. On the main stage, the retro 70s-TV theme of the show was represented by a massive old-school television set, which would play occasional short films in which the three boys were advertising various fictional life-enhancing products with a cheesy cheeriness.

Support came from Olly Mars who could have been genetically engineered to be the perfect Take That opening act, appearing as he does to be basically a cross between Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams. He had plenty of catchy tunes to entertain the crowd, and his warm exuberance ignited the anticipation for the night ahead of us.

In between Olly and Take That came the one bad moment of the night for me. I’d put my programme and hoodie jacket into my tote bag on the floor in front of me while bopping to Olly, but when I sat down and retrieved it, everything was soaking wet. Indeed, a flood of what seemed to be wine was soon sloshing round my feet, and it seems that the couple in front of me had somehow managed to spill a whole bottle on the floor. I went to the nearest steward who procured a cleaner to mop up the mess, but my programme was in a very bad state by then. I draped my bag and jacket over my chair to give them a chance to dry out, and perched the programme between them, but needless to say my mood was somewhat dampened by this time (if you’ll pardon the pun). This was not aided by the fact that no response came from the guilty parties, even though they could clearly see the havoc they’d caused. I guess there’s bound to be some dickheads at every gig, and I was just unlucky to find myself in the proximity of this evening’s idiots.

Happily, none of this mattered once Take That were on stage, appearing from within the massive telly to the mournful strains of the album’s opening track “Keep Your Head Up” with fake snow blasting out over the front few rows. Then came “Windows”, the song that had so perfectly encapsulated how I was feeling when it was released. This first section of the show saw the boys scrambling up and down massive moving staircases, with recent tracks like “Giants” and “Days I Hate Myself” nestled amongst classics from across the decades like “Sure” and “Shine”.

The second part of the show took the form of a ’70s TV-style “This Is Your Life” journey through the history of the band. This began with early singles “A Million Love Songs” and “I Found Heaven” before moving on to “Pray”, my all-time favourite TT song and the one that made me a fan, which was celebrated as their first number 1 single. Gloriously, it was performed with the full dance routine intact. After they had performed a slowed-down, dance-free version on their 2019 Odyssey tour, I had worried that the routine would be consigned to the past, especially with them being five years older now. But there it was, and I had such a perfect view of every weird little synchronised move from Mark and Howard while Gary sang, it truly felt magical.

Somehow, I managed to leave my clip of “Pray” out of my vlog of the evening, so here it is for you to once again enjoy the greatest dance routine of all time:

I truly hope they will continue performing those enthusiastic twirls, teapot poses and frantic prayer hair-flips well into their 70s.

This section also included a meander through the early solo careers of the three boys. Although Gary’s solo output has never been to my taste, it was a nostalgic treat to hear “Forever Love” and think back to those exciting times in 1996 when it seemed possible that we may be able to assuage our sorrow at Take That’s split with a potential five solo careers to follow. Of course, only three actually eventuated, and Robbie’s was not represented here, so it fell to Mark to be the Most Successful TT Solo Artist of the evening, blasting a rousing rendition of “Clementine”. As a devoted disciple of the Mark solo experience, it was a thrill to hear one of his own songs (and may I take up my regular plea for Mark to release another solo album as soon as possible, please?) To round off this frolic through TT’s wilderness years, Howard performed his unreleased single “Speak Without Words”, a sultry slice of 90s pop that gives us a glimpse of the excellent solo artist he might have been.

Luckily for me, the 3D glasses which were included the programme had not been damaged by the wine deluge, for one of the highlights of the show was a truly stunning 3D moment for “Greatest Day”, with the light show turning into levitating rotating blocks hovering over the crowd. A walkway was lowered during this song and they travelled to the B stage to finish it, then into a joyous trio of “These Days” “Time and Time Again” and “Relight My Fire”. It was another part of this show thar felt truly magical: being so close to the boys, Take That just being Take That right up there near me, a true privilege and delight. This is the joy of being a music fan now, seeing these boys who’ve been in my life for 30 years, a constant friend over the decades who appear from time to time to remind us what what makes life worth living.

Given my strong emotional connection to the latest album, there were a few times that hearing songs from it had me somewhat weepy. The first of these was “March of the Hopeful”, which came after the TV show section. With its soaring, optimistic chorus, and repeated refrain of “I don’t want to start again“, this song truly evoked a feeling of hope in me, with the memory of the moment when life started seeming like it actually might be okay again beaming bright in my mind.

“One More Word”, performed when they returned to the main stage after the B stage interlude, was a little bit more brutal, being a beautifully heartfelt message of love between a father and his daughter. The plea for “one more word while we’re together, because one day we will have to be apart” hit me just a little too close to home this night, and, to be honest, does so every time I listen to the song. Both of these songs feature Howard on lead vocals, and presumably are primarily his compositions, which adds to the regret that he never carved himself a solo career. He surely would have been capable of producing a profound, emotionally-stirring oeuvre.

Finishing with the blockbuster quartet of “Hold Up A Light”, “Back For Good”, “Never Forget” and “Rule The World”, this show was truly something special. It may have lacked some of the heightened spectacle of other Take That tours, such as the dancing troupes or highly elaborate staging, but it more than made up for it with heart and emotion. For me, this was a much more personal show than Odyssey, and very, very cathartic.

Now, of course, the boys are gearing up to reprise their 2009 “The Circus” stadium tour this summer, so heightened spectacle is definitely back on the menu. I am excited to have the chance experience that most legendary of tours, having missed it the first time around. But “This Life” brought light and hope into my life just when I needed it most, and I suspect it will be the Take That era that remains forever closest to my heart.