Pet Shop Boys

This summer's series of Heritage Live concerts at Sandringham Royal Estate kicked off on Thursday night with an epic greatest hits performance from Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe who, as Pet Shop Boys, will be celebrating forty years since West End Girls became their very first UK number one. They have since gone on to sell over 100 million records worldwide, and are generally accepted to be the most successful duo in UK music history. And yet, as Neil Tennant pointed out during the evening, they have only ever played in Norfolk once before – and that was at the UEA, way back in February 2002. Their Dreamworld greatest hits show has now been performed over seventy times across the world since its first night in Milan in May 2022, and the band's appearance at Sandringham Park is one of just five UK appearances this year. Welcome back to Norfolk, boys.

Beginning with Suburbia, the third hit single to be taken from 1986 debut album, Please, Tennant and Lowe take their Sandringham audience on a journey that spans four decades, and includes almost every hit, up to and including Dancing Star and A New Bohemia from last year's Nonetheless album. The comprehensive twenty-two song main set brings back memory after memory flooding back for those in the audience old enough to have been original West End Girls, but who are kept hanging on until the very end to hear it again, forming first half of a two-song encore that concludes with the ironically entitled Being Boring.

But boring they were not. Far from it. This was a finely honed , and thoroughly entertaining performance, with Neil and Chris wearing their classically eccentric outfits, and with a spectacular lighting and video show. Highly impressive was keyboard player Clare Uchima, who took the place of Dusty Springfield, performing the duet with Neil during the classic collaboration What Have I Done To Deserve This. The rest of the band - Afrika Green, Bubba McCarthy and Simon Tellier, all ensured that Dreamworld really sounded like a live performance.

With the arena gates opening at 2pm, and a glorious summer afternoon laid on for the occasion, revellers had plenty of time to grab a drink and something to eat from the variety of food stalls, and even enjoy a fairground ride or two, before the main programme kicked off with a high-energy two-hour set of Ibiza anthems from legendary 90's dance DJ Dave Pearce that had us pumped up with everything from Prodigy to Faithless, and Alice Deejay to Florence and the Machine.

Main support came from a specially reunited Scissor Sisters, still fronted by the fabulous Jake Spears, and joined on stage by original bassist and keyboards player Babydaddy and guitarist Del Marquis, but given a raunchy new campness in the shape of brand new back-up singers Amber Martin and Bridget Barkin, together with drummer Randy Real and additional key-tar player Karme Caruso. We certainly missed the presence of original singer Ana Mantronix on stage, but with classic songs like Filthy/Gorgeous, Laura and I Don't Feel Like Dancin', as well as the Sisters' iconic cover of the Pink Floyd classic Comfortably Numb, it was great to have them back. And Jake Spears later returned to the stage during Pet Shop Boys' main set as guest vocals on Dreamland.