James Dean Bradfield was always the physical pack-horse behind his crew - the Mechanic Street Preacher, if you will, who left most of the suicidal poetry to the members of the band who liked to pencil on their eye-liner that little bit thicker.

Tonight Nicky Wire, the bassist who went from being Generation Terrorist to the world's biggest fan of the Dyson vacuum cleaner, and Sean Moore, the cute drummer, are off having a good vac and a few hours on the PlayStation respectively, so the onus is on Bradfield to be dynamic. He does this in the best way he knows how - by brute force. To give him an amplifier is a nasty insult.

The biggest man ever to have measured 5ft 5 can also deal with the emotional. He laments that Richey Edwards, the missing Manics member, can't be here and then launches into You Stole the Sun From My Heart, Roses in the Hospital and Faster, a song about being simultaneously strong and weak. It's all as vulnerable as it sounds and, between songs, Bradfield seems nervous. After a question-and-answer session, during which he reveals he is not too old for wearing glitter, but has never worn a thong, and now prefers to dress like his Dad, he relaxes all muscles except for his jaw. The kind of intensity that causes a man to grit his teeth as

he strums is making old fans a

bit teary.

The set list, (songs from all eras between Suicide is Painless and Design For Life), may sound like a big build up to the forthcoming Greatest Hits, but critics who cry ''mainstream'' can be at peace in the knowledge that the next album is to be ''cold and judgmental'' and that there are still very few who could screech out the f-word quite like Bradfield.

It's astonishing that so much can be stirred by man, voice, guitar, nothing more. But for those among the 250 lucky people here aware of the ragged heritage Bradfield represents, very little means an awful lot.