Star rating: **** It was a dreich night at the top of the town and what might well have been the best post-midnight fireworks show yet for Stirling's Hogmanay was semi-obscured by low cloud, but the big yellow Sold Out signs on the road up to the castle told their own story. A capacity 7000 crowd had recognised that Craig and Charlie's best 12-month since there was Sunshine on Leith guaranteed a rousing party at the bells. Certainly, supporting trio the Gary Blair Ceilidh Band were prepared to give their all in the cause. Invited back after last year's cancellation, they are a rocket-fuelled take on tradition: strict-time snare drumming, and fiddle and box operating at maximum velocity. Not joining in the massed bad waltzing would have been churlish and other telling contributions from the punters included a sweetly sung, non-belligerent, Flower of Scotland, and a massed jaw-drop at Blair's lightning-fingered version of Simon Jeffes's Music for a Found Harmonium.

Star rating: ****

It was a dreich night at the top of the town and what might well have been the best post-midnight fireworks show yet for Stirling's Hogmanay was semi-obscured by low cloud, but the big yellow Sold Out signs on the road up to the castle told their own story. A capacity 7000 crowd had recognised that Craig and Charlie's best 12-month since there was Sunshine on Leith guaranteed a rousing party at the bells. Certainly, supporting trio the Gary Blair Ceilidh Band were prepared to give their all in the cause. Invited back after last year's cancellation, they are a rocket-fuelled take on tradition: strict-time snare drumming, and fiddle and box operating at maximum velocity. Not joining in the massed bad waltzing would have been churlish and other telling contributions from the punters included a sweetly sung, non-belligerent, Flower of Scotland, and a massed jaw-drop at Blair's lightning-fingered version of Simon Jeffes's Music for a Found Harmonium.

The Proclaimers are the only band in the world who can spice up Hogmanay with a song - In Recognition - condemning those named in the New Year's Honours List. Shame Hanif Kureishi wasn't there to hear it, say I. If that nice irony was lost on some, that was true of much of the early part of the set, drawn from their latest Life With You album. It was, predictably, more familiar fare like On My Way, Cap in Hand, the still-hackle-raising Letter From America, and I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) that lifted the occasion (although a few chaps could be seen looking at their shoes during Let's Get Married). Before an unusually low-pitched, if up-tempo Auld Lang Syne, however, the surprise climax was provided by the Reids' big brash cover of Wreckless Eric's Whole Wide World. Now why was that single not the international hit it deserved to be?