Kylie Hammersmith Apollo

KYLIE Minogue is a street scrapper of the highest order. While music has never seemed much more than a lucrative hobby to her, she has survived Stock Aitken Waterman, Michael Hutchence and an air of all-consuming naffness to secure seven Number One singles since 1988. She is truly loved and engenders goodwill with such ease that Madonna must wonder just how the tiny Australian does it.

On Saturday, before an audience of competition-winners and minor celebrities, including her sister Dannii (who departed halfway through), Yasmin Le Bon, someone from Mis-Teeq and Will Young, Minogue recorded a show to be broadcast on ITV next Saturday. "There are," she noted beneath house lights undimmed owing to the demands of television, "lots of friends and business associates here."

The mysterious "business associates" would have been delighted with the heavy promotion of her new album, Body Language. Everyone else, however, was bemused by a set that lasted barely an hour. Mirroring the hollowness at the centre of her work, there were several between-song gaps, presumably for easy insertion of television advertisements, where nothing happened.

Apparently five weeks of rehearsals were needed. Even so, Minogue (part Julie Christie, part Susan George, but still lacking any sexual spark), her 12 dancers, four vocalists and a band guiltily lurking in a distant corner of the stage resembled a Seventies variety show featuring The Young Generation.

When the material was strong, all was well. The magnificent Can't Get You Out Of My Head oozed "la-la-la" joy, while Spinning Around and Love At First Sight underpinned the visuals with irresistible pop hooks.

Unfortunately, the problems with basing a show around Body Language were twofold. First, a crowd packed with children was unfamiliar with the songs; second, those songs' deficiencies could not be obscured by frantic dancing, outfit changes or Minogue lolling on a motor cycle as she did during Secret (Take You Home). When, for After Dark, the dancers fled and she was marooned on stage with only backing singers for protection, the results were disastrous, and not just in comparison with the leaner street scrapper that is Christina Aguilera ...

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