Exactly how must it feel to rise up through a catwalk amid dry ice and fireballs to be confronted by 55,000 people screaming your name? Magnified by the big screens around the stage, Robbie Williams’s eyes glistened and that lower lip wobbled visibly.

Composing himself for a euphoric brace of hits spanning the two sides of his career — Rock DJ and Tripping — Williams can’t have failed to notice his visage on the Caledonian flags that conferred honorary Scotsman status upon him. He bade the national football team good luck, and the ensuing roar reverberated into Monsoon and his 1999 chart-topper Millennium — songs that bore testament to his unfailing common touch.

It’s that populism that denies Williams the plaudits heaped upon more earnest artists. But if he is tormented by notions that he could be cooler, it didn’t show during a section in which he was joined by Professional Best Buddy Jonathan Wilkes, performing a forgettable Me & My Shadow.

To say it was cheesy is to add nothing to what we already know about Williams. But there was something startling about watching his journey back from the end-of-pier schtick into self-deconstructions such as Make Me Pure and Advertising Space. Assisted by Claire Worrall’s plaintive harmonies, the latter brought out his best performance of the evening.

At this stage of their careers, most pop stars have mastered the imperious gaze that suggests that all this adulation is the least they deserve. But Williams still has the air of a man who can’t believe his luck. Descending in a gondola for the encore, he sang Let Me Entertain You and Rudebox. One of these songs is nine years old, the other is only just out — but he tore into both as though it were the first time he had performed them.

With only one major hit now left unsung, it didn’t take a genius to deduce what was coming. Angels may have been no less expected than the thrashing administered by Scotland upon the Faroe Islands, but the sound of 55,000 voices echoing around Hampden still divined more tears from the singer. “Scotland, I love you,” he told them. The feeling was mutual.

Leeds Roundhay Park, Sept 8-9; Milton Keynes Bowl, Sept 14-16, 18-19

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