In all my visits to Ronnie Scott's, I've never seen a performance like it. Not the steampowered crooning of this Italian-American legend, although that was impressive enough; but the tuning, polishing and general faffing before Tony Bennett appeared on stage.

Ronnie's is pretty smart since its refurb, but even when it was a characterful pigsty, the instruments were clean and tuned. Not that Bennett could be expected to know that: Saturday was, amazingly, the octogenarian's first outing in this venue, an honour commemorated by Michael Parkinson bounding onstage after the set ("Give us a song, Parky!" bellowed some wag) to present Bennett with a lifetime achievement award. So there was theatre.

There was romance, too, and unintentional comedy, when Bennett announced that he is getting married, and the more ungallant section of the audience chortled. But he silenced the cynics with a gloriously heartfelt rendition of They Can't Take that Away from Me, directed at his fiancée.

That's the thing about Bennett: he's pitch-perfect, in every sense. The suit is spiffy, the face improbably youthful; the smile is fixed but the right arm waves gently, fingers giving the occasional time-honoured snap.

The songs are the standards the audience craves, and if on Saturday he didn't play The Good Life there were precious few other omissions. Stella By Starlight showcased the expressive power of that distinctive voice, which even now betrays only a slight tremor; on All of Me he demonstrated that he can even shout in tune - and boy, can he shout.

He knows when a soft touch is not required: I Left m0y Heart in San Francisco may be one of his greatest hits but it's surely the soppiest celebration of a great city ever put to music. However, his rigorous, unsentimental rendition deftly skimmed the sugar.

Chat was very limited, as it should be when a man's pushing 81 and determined to cram nearly 20 songs into his set. Those who came to hear him swing went home happy.