Great night for our city

It was a special night in Sunderland city centre on Thursday, November 23 – the Christmas lights were switched on at Keel Square, the magnificent Fire Station was officially opened and Paul Heaton and Jacqui Abbott played a concert at the Sunderland Empire

I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the Heaton/ Abbott and co concert and what a fabulous gig it was.

In the main there was a mixture of songs from the excellent current album Crooked Calypso including People Like Us, The Fat Man, The Lord is a White Con, Your Bit of Stuff, Silence Is, He Wants To and from the Wisdom Laughter and Lines album cracking versions of The Austerity of Love and (Man is) the biggest Bitch of All together with the Housemartins classic Happy Hour and the quality Beautiful South songs Song for Whoever, Don’t Marry Her, A little Time, Perfect 10, Old Red Eyes and Rotterdam. The audience lapped it up.

Paul was in good form all night with his humourous craic about Simon Grayson, the City of Culture bid, his memories of the miners’ strike and about the support band.

Both Paul Jacqui and the band were clearly enjoying themselves and former Beautiful South frontman Heaton described the Sunderland Empire as beautiful.

November 23, 2017, was a beautiful night for our city hopefully one of many more to come. Tony Ratton