The Human League at Hammersmith

Last weekend I had a date with The Human League at Hammersmith Apollo, the same venue as the now legendary Kate Bush gigs. I never miss a date with the League. I've seen them before at Hammersmith but never from the eighth row so I was very pleased indeed. I've loved the Human League for 35 years and it's always good to see them. They are the epitome of professionalism and always give good show, with fab lights, excellent sounds and, of course, songs that are most fab.

As ever, Phil strode across the stage while Susan and Joanne (aka The Girls) sang at their mic's, arms in the air and bums wiggling (as is The Law) with a three-piece band making some amazing electronic sounds. Can anything be better than that? And lights going off everywhere, atmospheric and exciting, and never knowing where to look next. They have more hits than you can shake a stick at and it's always interesting to see which songs they include as well as those they don't play on each tour.

They were in monochrome again. When the girls wore black Phil wore white and vice versa. I sort of like the idea that they plan their shows down to those details - it's all designed to give us a good time and they never fail to deliver.

They opened with 'Mirror Man' and went straight into 'The Sound of the Crowd', getting us off to a great start with two favourites. We had 'Sky' and 'Night People' from the last album but, other than those, we were given hit after hit and songs that everyone must know. The age profile of the audience suggested to me early on that here we have fans from way back having a Saturday night out.

We had 'Seconds' with the clock ticking on the giant video display, the always excellent 'The Lebanon', 'Life On Your Own' and 'Louise' and, of course, '(Keep Feeling) Fascination'. An instrumental 'Hard Times' gave them a break for a clothes change and they came back with 'Love Action' and 'Tell Me When'.

The final song was 'Don't You Want Me' (of course) with Susan holding out her mic so we can sing 'I still love you' (and we do!). What an amazing song to finish with, one of the biggest hits ever summing them up so perfectly.The Human League created a new way of being pop stars and having pop hits and that song says it all really.

But there was more…

The first encore was 'The Path of Least Resistance' from 'Reproduction' before the girls joined the League, a most unexpected song. The second was 'Human', another unexpected song that I don't think I've seen live before and finishing with the wonderful 'Together In Electric Dreams', Phil's hit with Georgio Moroder.

The Human League are always excellent and always worth seeing. I am very proud of them. They give us love and dancing and what more could we want?