Bryan Adams

London The O2

There will probably be another tonight.

Some things in life you can depend on. Take Bryan Adams. He’s risen from Vancouver’s clubs to the world’s arenas without straying from his basic template: a super-tight band rattling out super-tight anthems with everyman charm.

It’s a slow start tonight (“Maybe we should have played this one earlier,” Adams muses after a blistering Summer Of ’69 galvanises an initially polite audience 30 minutes in), but by the time he’s slalomed through almost 40 years of hits, he’s so at ease with himself that he dispenses Everything I Do (I Do It For You) unannounced midway through the set. And when the relatively recent Brand New Day thunders as fiercely as the ancient Run To You, it’s yet another roaring triumph. When Adams dedicates Straight From The Heart to his hospitalised 90-year-old mother, it’s moving too.

Wisely, beyond matching jackets, shirts and jeans for Adams and band, a huge screen and some subtle lighting, there are no concessions to status.

The acoustic portions give songs such as When You’re Gone the space to soar, and there’s even a surprise when, after a garage assault on I Fought

The Law, Manx singer Samantha Barks – star of Adams’s Broadway-bound musical version of the Pretty Woman film – belts out the almost Steinmanesque I Can’t Go Back in the encore. Another show, another audience more than pleased.