Prince opened his 19^th London concert on Sunday night with the song 1999 — which happened to be the year in which I last visited the venue in which he was performing. Then it was the not-quite-finished Millennium Dome, and as my colleagues and I wandered its vast spaces in hard hats, those in charge told us how wonderful it was going to be. We were as sceptical of their claims as Northern Rock’s investors have been about assurances as to the safety of their savings. And we were proved right. It didn’t feel like a place that could house success.  
   It does now. The O2, as it’s known, is one of the best concert venues in the city, with buzzing bars and restaurants, and a staff who are friendly and efficient and who seem to mean it when they say have a good evening.
  We did. Everyone, or almost everyone, who has been to the O2 has raved about Prince, many of them in the columns of my own paper, which has run a short review of every night’s performance. The weight of expectation was enormous, but the pocket-sized Prince – aided by a tight band and sexy dancers known only as The Twins — managed not to sink beneath it.
   This is a man who can sing falsetto soul, play blues guitar and even venture into heavy metal with a Whole Lotta Love tribute to Led Zeppelin. He took the same approach to his own back catalogue, which was a bit confusing for those of us who weren’t already wholly committed fans and had been drawn by “the gig of the year” word of mouth. A sample here, a segue there, and just when you’d figured out that this one was Little Red Corvette it had morphed into something else.
   For the encore he dipped in and out of Nothing Compares 2 U, When Doves Cry, Pop Life and Raspberry Beret. It made me want to listen again to the couple of Prince albums I’ve got and buy a few more. “I don’t know what to do, London,” he had yelled at one point. But he knew, all right.