THERE'S only one really weird thing about pop's most celebrated oddball these days . . . his voice.

It's not natural to be able to sing like that, especially at the age of 57.

Time hasn't stood still for David Bowie, it's gone in reverse. He looks and sounds better than he did 20 years ago.

And at the Manchester Arena on Monday night the Thin White Duke showed why he is hip again after all these years. Bowie is pure class. He let his band make the big entrance and then strolled on stage to astonish the masses with his powerful and flawless new take on the 1974 gem, Rebel Rebel.

This was a strictly very old or very new set, there was little from the wilderness years of the mid '80s to early '90s apart from an utterly stunning version of Under Pressure. Stunning thanks mainly to the incredible vocal talents of bass player Gail Ann Dorsey singing the late Freddie Mercury's part.

Bowie's strength has always been his ability to reinvent himself and last night he was able to perform radically different versions of 24-carat classics like Heroes and a spine-tingling Life On Mars, and not upset the faithful, of which there were many.

On top of that, among the high points of the night were the new songs, Reality and Never Get Old (complete with very welcome echoes of The Clash) were received as enthusiastically as Fame, Ashes to Ashes and the truly brilliant Changes.

Even Hallo Spaceboy rocked and, happily, Lulu wasn't on hand to crucify The Man Who Sold The World.

Bowie also produced (perhaps inadvertently) a topical moment with a powerhouse stomp through I'm Afraid Of Americans.

The encores were three timeless slices of pop history from the 1972 masterpiece The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars. Five Years buttered us up; we "wham, bammed, thankyou mam'd" in unison to Suffragette City; and when Ziggy pla-a-a-a-yed guitar we knew it couldn't get any better and it was time to go home.

With all this adulatory prose you could be forgiven for thinking that Bowie was preaching to the converted.

Wrong. I wasn't a die-hard fan before. I am now.

KAREN STEPHEN