An impressive thicket of celebrities encircled Tony Bennett in the artists' backstage bar last night. TV host David Frost, painter Peter Blake and actresses Joanna Lumley and Martine McCutcheon were among those who thronged to shake the great man's hand.

No doubt about the star quality here. This was a triumphant evening for a venerated performer whose virile, Broadway-hip approach to singing is an increasingly precious reminder of a forgotten age when pop music was created for adults.

Here for a seven-date UK tour that includes a £150-a-head black-tie do at Ronnie Scott's next Sunday - a benefit for the Old Vic, a project dear to the heart of Ronnie's owner Sally Greene - Bennett was expected to take things a little easy on opening night, but not a bit of it.

With 105 albums and scores of hits to his name, the one-time singing waiter from New York turned 80 last year, but with that resolutely forward-looking attitude all Americans share, he called this The Best Is Yet To Come Tour and appeared to mean it.

On his last visit a fire in the stalls suddenly emptied the auditorium, but this time the fireworks all came from the bandstand. Heartened by a standing ovation, Bennett eased into Watch What Happens. Between this and his closing number - another Michel Legrand classic, How Do You Keep the Music Playing - he delivered a flawless 90-minutes from the Great American Songbook, almost 30 songs without a break.

"Why does Tony Bennett look like he's fighting off a mugger at the end of every tune?" a US reviewer once complained. Well, the arms continue to thrash a little, but given the awesome lung-power with which he can still climax such emotive songs as Maybe This Time and For Once In My Life, this is mere nit-picking.

There was a tender side as he demonstrated with Jerome Kern's masterpiece, All The Things You Are. "Probably," he remarked, "the greatest pop song ever written."

Beside him was a slick group packed with jazz talent, including pianist-MD Bruce Barth, guitarist Gray Sargent and Harold Jones, a drummer whose cleanly constructed fills sounded marvellous.

"I love this old hall," said Tony at last. "It's the real thing, unlike the filing cabinets they build nowadays. Turn the mikes off, please, Stan." With that he sang Fly Me to the Moon, proudly, acoustically, and with only Sargent's guitar for company. His voice reached every cranny inside the dome. It was the moment fans had come to hear. They knew that very few others can do it, and that fairly soon nobody else will.