Thank you for the music!

The tribute Benny himself said are 'the closest you can get to seeing Abba' at Vaillant Live was full-throttle pop cheese, says GEORGE ALLEN

- 

HAVING performed for no less than Bill Gates, Rowan Atkinson and Vladimir Putin - admittedly not all at the same concert and the latter in 2009 - the time has come for Björn Again to perform their first gig at Vaillant Live in Derby.

This is no ordinary tribute band. So great is their reputation that Benny Andersson himself once said: "Bjorn Again are the closest you can get to seeing Abba."

The only problem? I don’t really like Abba. I know that they're good, they're very widely loved and their songs are supremely catchy. But I never play them at home and I definitely couldn’t name all the members in a pub quiz.

The reason I’m here tonight is that our readers have asked us to write reviews of gigs at the new performance venue.

So we decided to attend some of the bestselling shows in the diary - and here I am.

I would say the audience is largely 40 and over and mostly women - a lot of the men here seem to have been brought along by their partners.

I do spot a few younger people (one of whom wearing what I think was a Sex Pistols T-shirt) and they don’t appear to be with families dragging them along.