Show us a bit more emotion, Britney!

Along way into the first of her three london shows, Britney Spears finally chatted at length to her fans.

Adopting a fake Cockney accent, as Katy Perry did on the same stage in June, she fell back on a crowd-pleasing trick.

‘I want to check you guys out to see which side of the audience is the loudest,’ she said. ‘let’s start with the right side . . . do you think you guys can do this?’

The pantomime continued for a few minutes, with Britney playing the leotard-clad cheerleader as the volume rose: ‘You can do better than that . . . let’s try again!’

Hackneyed as it was, the stunt was a rare moment of verbal engagement in a fast-moving spectacle that lacked the personal touch.

Spears, 36, has worked hard to keep her career on track after two broken marriages and a public meltdown that culminated in her shaving off her locks in 2007, but she has never been one of pop’s natural communicators.

She is a trouper, though, and there were still things to admire in a performance that adapted her las Vegas show, which ran for four years, for the UK.

Her dancing was slick and her four- piece band added inventive new arrangements to familiar tunes. With lightsabers, lasers and a video duet with will.i.am, all the trappings of a big arena concert were there.

This show was sold out, and an audience of 20,000, largely female, greeted every move with unbridled enthusiasm.

Many would have been in their teens when her first single, Baby one More Time, came out 20 years ago, and a sense of

nostalgia hung in the air. It’s no surprise that Piece of Me is the year’s second best-selling female show. Britney is a bigger draw than Katy Perry or Paloma Faith, and only Taylor Swift’s Reputation tour was a bigger box-office hit this summer.

Spears leant heavily on the hits that sustained her for two decades. Her uneven career is dotted by a string of copperbottomed pop singles and from Baby one More Time to Make Me, WAS most of them featured here.

SHE singing live? Britney has admitted her concerts are enhanced with ‘a little bit’ of pre-recorded backing, and her vocals here, live or not, were given depth by a coating of digital wizardry.

Some singers grow more expressive with age, but Britney has become more robotic: Freakshow, Do You Wanna Come over? and a cover of Missy Elliott’s get Ur Freak on weren’t so much sung as barked out as spoken-word pieces.

Having arrived in a cape and top hat, Britney hot- stepped through routines that mixed burlesque and Broadway.

Womanizer cast her as an overexcited fitness instructor. oops! . . . I Did It Again was sung on a sea of dry ice. gimme More Spears: Fast-moving show saw a change of costume into a spangly leotard.

And for Freakshow, a hapless male fan was marched around on all fours on a dog leash. He was rewarded with a T-shirt.

But, for all the bumping and grinding, the onus was on enjoyment, with nothing that could be deemed too raunchy.

As the night closed with an artificial thunderstorm, it was hard not to admire her staying power. This show was efficient rather than emotional, but Spears is a star built to last.

Britney SpearS plays Birmingham’s Genting arena tonight and tower Festival Headland, Blackpool, tomorrow (livenation.co.uk).