The only thing anyone over the age of 13 knows about The Jonas Brothers is that they are virgins. The New Jersey siblings, aged 21, 19 and 16, were most famously ribbed about their vacuum-packed underpants by master of tact Russell Brand at an awards ceremony last year.

Purported purity is hardly a new pop marketing tactic, of course. Instead let’s talk about the screaming.

Hell’s bells, the screaming! At their first London arena show it was as if every schoolgirl believed that true fandom was only signalled by puncturing an eardrum.

The mania that The Beatles endured can hardly have been any louder than this. That’s what prompted them to abandon touring in favour of making extraordinary albums, a stage The Jonas Brothers are unlikely to reach. Two albums released in less than a year, the latest this week, offer little beyond generic Disney Club mulch as disposable as tissue paper.

With the brothers playing guitar and piano, with extra help here from horn and violin players, more guitar, bass and drums, the extra volume in the arena gave a more satisfying crunch to upbeat rockers such as BB Good and World War III.

In contrast, the ballads Gotta Find You and A Little Bit Longer were drippy beyond words, Nick Jonas sounding like every arouser of puppy love before him as he mooned away at the piano.

In deference to their UK equivalents they played the Busted hit Year 3000 and brought McFly on stage to play their song Star Girl. The Brits doubled the energy levels instantly and made their successors look tame fare indeed.

The remaining breath was knocked out of the evening when the brothers spent tedious minutes setting up a live link to an American chat show to perform Paranoid, a song they had already played once. The breathless ohmygodohmygod brigade screamed on regardless.