Ray Davies at The Royal Festival Hall

My pre-Christmas gig this year was seeing Ray Davies at The Royal Festival Hall on Sunday night, accompanied by his chums over the last couple of years, the Crouch End Festival Chorus. I saw Ray at the Royal Albert Hall back in May and, before that, last Christmas, at Hammersmith Apollo. So he's fast becoming a Christmas tradition.

The format of the gig followed the same format as when he played Hammersmith, opening with Ray and guitarist doing an acoustic set and then the band joining in followed by a half time break. After that, the Chorus joined Ray on stage for versions of Kinks songs from the 'Kinks Choral Collection'. Ray was on top form, happily joking, exhorting us to clap and sing along, telling tales of the old days and improvising every now and then, responding to shout outs for the audience and launching into a rendition of 'Harry Rag' and then of 'Father Christmas' (how does he remember the lyrics?). When you've got a back catalogue like Ray's it must give him tremendous scope to play with songs and, in a way, that's what he does in his acoustic set.

Ray opened with 'This Is Where I Belong' despite saying later that when he saw Chuck Berry at the Royal Festival Hall ten years ago that he swore he'd never play in the place - I know what he means, though, it's not the most rock venue in London. We then had lovely renditions of 'Dedicated Follower Of Fashion', 'Dead End Street', 'Autumn Almanac' and band joining the acoustic duo on stage to fill out the sound.

The second half kicked off with the Chorus taking their places, followed by the four-piece band and then Ray. We were treated to most of 'The Kinks Choral Collection' and particular favourites were ' Celluloid Heroes', 'See My Friends' and 'Working Man's Cafe'. It was great fun to listen to Ray explain how he'd written 'You Really Got Me' and how Dave had invented the classic guitar riff. The set closed with a great series of songs: 'Postcard From London', 'Days' and 'Waterloo Sunset', a trilogy of songs that worked really well. And a single encore of 'All Day And All Of The Night' which had everyone on their feet and loads of people dancing down the front of the stage. My one disappointment was no 'Lola' - how is that possible?

It's great to see Ray and it's great to see him re-interpret and re-present his old songs, but you know what I'd like? I'd quite like a straight rock gig - he proves he can do it every time I see him, letting the band rock out and Ray singing on top of the wild rock sounds. He's a great performer and has nearly 50 years of showing us how to respond to his gigs - long may he continue!