Live reviews

KELLY CLARKSON

ACADEMY, GLASGOW

EVER the professional, American Idol's first winner Kelly Clarkson made a cutesy reference to how this stage isn't her usual size and, gosh, everyone – her whole entourage of band and backing singers – are up there with her. All of which might roughly translate as, "I'm one of the most famous people in the world. Why am I not in an aerodrome?"

Yet if Clarkson has let it go to her head that a worldwide audience hungrily feast on every song she happens to release it didn't show. She is friendly and likeable, which is why she won the world's biggest talent show, after all.

That fact, along with the fact George W Bush is in the White House, is simply proof that millions of Americans can be wrong. Clarkson might have been the best on show in 2002, but that doesn't explain the success of her output over the three albums which followed (number four is due off the production line soon). A slew of mushy interludes prevailed, including her signature Because of You, the gut-churning Breakaway and the song she liked so much she recorded it twice, Beautiful Disaster.

Moments of excitement were few, but Miss Independent snapped us out of the mid-set torpor with a fleeting Pat Benatar impression, while a lovely cover of Patti Griffin's Up to the Mountain showed where the singer's real talent lies: as a girl-next-door gospel chanteuse for the MOR market.

DAVID POLLOCK

MUSIC

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS

BARROWLAND, GLASGOW

GLASGOW'S Barrowland Ballroom witnesses many spectacularly raucous occasions in a year, but for sheer loved-up, beery pogoing St Patrick's Day will never be surpassed. At least not until Jake Burns's knees give out anyway.

For 17 years the Stiff Little Fingers frontman (the only permanent member of the Belfast punk rockers since their formation in 1977) has RSVP'd in the affirmative to the musty old place's one-of-a-kind open invitation for his band to play there annually on the day. It's no small accolade considering the venue's status as one of the world's most celebrated venues – even if the staggering amount of lager sold (half of which ended up hurled across the room) did go some way to explaining the logic behind it.

Burns – who turned 50 this year – remains a likeably chatty, effusive fellow. He's an intelligent, witty songwriter, too, and, while hardly remembered as fondly, the likes of Fly the Flag, Silver Lining and Alternative Ulster are cut from much the same right-on, Thatcher-booting cloth as some of Joe Strummer's better moments (to whom he dedicated a cover of Clash City Rockers). The single slow(ish) number, Barbed Wire Love, meanwhile, had practically the full room swaying along.

Will SLF be back next March? As long as Irish eyes are bloodshot, glazed and struggling to focus, you can be almost certain of it.

MALCOLM JACK

COMEDY

JO CAULFIELD

TRON, GLASGOW

APPROPRIATE for a show about going to hell, Jo Caulfield immediately committed cardinal sin number one. Announcing her own introduction from backstage, she warned anyone who has a problem with cursing that they can get their coat and f*** off. It was a horribly hack beginning, only saved by her not coming on and making a crack or two about the fact that she had to do her own introduction from backstage.

Coming across like the third saltiest dame in a wine bar crowd, Londoner Caulfield instantly got on the Glasgow gang's side by assaulting Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Paisley before spelling out her mighty concept. It was Jo Caulfield Goes To Hell, and she chatted about the things and the people that irritate her and which she wishes to consign to the fiery pits of Satan's lair. Yes, it was Room 101 without Paul Merton but full of the same noxious whining. So, among those getting it in the neck were celebrities (oh risky), children (edgy), her parents (dangerous stuff) and how awful it is that some people can be loved-up (eat your hat, Lucy Porter).

Worst of all was her war on international terrorists with dj vu material on the 72 virgins awaiting Allah's suicide bombers and the weakest set of gags yet on the stand-up's current must-do topic, the Glasgow Airport attack. While not exactly hell on a stick, this still felt like purgatory.

BRIAN DONALDSON