I think I’ve complained before about how cold the floor is at the MEN Arena, well tonight the whole venue was bitterly cold - it literally was warmer outside! I know that they have ice below the flooring (as this venue doubles as an ice rink) so they can’t overheat it or we would all sink into the ice but getting the air temperature a few degrees above freezing would be nice. You literally could see the breath you exhaled at some places in the hall!!

Anyway, once Kasim took the stage, all my physical miseries were soon forgotten but I did notice that even Kasim didn’t take off his jacket until Bat Out Of Hell!

For the more detailed review of Kasim's set click here.

The set list was the same as at Cardiff and Meat Loaf seemed in a fun mood again. Some friends I met after the show who are fans of Meat Loaf and can actually spot when his voice is good or bad (for me, providing he sings his lead vocals around Kasim’s perfect background vocals is good enough for me as I tend to block out Meat’s vocals and listen more to Kasim anyway) all said that Meat Loaf’s voice was very strong tonight but remarked that he didn’t hold the long notes quite as long as he had on Sunday.

The morbid beginning to the set had one light hearted moment when the cameramen decided to show a close up shot of Patti leaning over the trolley which clearly revealed her black knickers! That bought a roar of approval from the crowd!

As Meat Loaf had got the Manchester crowd up early on at the previous two concerts, they didn’t need to be told tonight so as soon as Life Is A Lemon started, the front was swarmed which made for a much better atmosphere….if only Wembley would allow people to do the same!

Kasim certainly covers some miles on stage as, although he’s mainly on the left of the stage, he often wanders across to Paul’s side (just as well for me as I’m mainly seated on Paul’s side at the rest of the concerts!) or up to the drums or even just across to stand in front of the drums. At one point early on in the set tonight when Kasim was on Paul’s side, I noticed that him and Meat Loaf were joking about something which resulted in Kasim pretending to kick Meat Loaf and then he went and sat on one of the two stools on the stage for a brief while!

Kasim does make far more eye contact with the audience than probably the rest of the band put together! Patti will often smile at people or wave hello but Kasim is constantly smiling at people or throwing picks at them (all except me, of course - I’m thinking of taking along a butterfly net to try to catch one before the end of the tour!). He ran out of guitar picks again tonight before the end of the set!

Tonight in DeadRinger Meat Loaf wore both his sunglasses and a cowboy hat. His “does anyone here want to be my girlfriend” comment brought even more cheers than normal - I had no idea that there were so many gold-diggers in Manchester!

At the beginning of Testify, Meat Loaf dragged the extra microphone across to the centre of the stage and visibly told Kasim to use that one this time! Unfortunately Meat Loaf still hasn’t mastered the art of placing the stand in a spotlight so both Kasim and CC weren’t lit too well for their lead vocals. We had probably the most amount of the tour of Kasim and Meat Loaf (oops! Meat Loaf and Kasim!) saying “Testify” as I counted at least eight each.

In You Took The Words Right Outta My Mouth tonight when it was time for “us” to sing, Meat Loaf made some sarcastic comments about how “sweet” we were singing….saying that we weren’t singing loud or strong enough! This resulted in Kasim having to start us singing again a few times which was just brilliant to hear!

Midnight At The Lost And Found sounded really good tonight….less hesitant than on Sunday. Kasim plays some amazing guitar in that song (probably the others do too but Kasim was in front of me for that part so I was watching him). The comment about them being “the best rock and roll band” came to my mind during that part of the set. I think Kasim messed up in the vocals only part of that song as he sang the first echoed “Midnight” but missed the second. He still does the left sided head jerk that he used to do in places on that song in 1996!

Thankfully Paradise By The Dashboard Light was nice and short tonight (well as short as that song can be) as we just had the whale and slapper impressions and very little waffle after the “praying for the end of time” part. Meat Loaf did put on Patti’s wig which was funny.

The band introductions were an event in themselves tonight! Although none of the descriptions on the screens changed, the way that Meat Loaf grabbed Kasim’s arm meant that it was across his body so he did “a little twirl” (that’s a UK saying!). Meat Loaf then said that he was “weighing in at 148 pounds” so Kasim did some boxing shuffles. At the end of the introductions, Meat Loaf remarked on how long the band had been playing the one chord (!) before they finished Paradise with a few bars of Rule Britannia.

For some reason Kasim used his pearl coloured guitar in every song tonight except Anything For Love when he used his maroon coloured one. He often favours his black bass more than the others but he didn’t use it all either tonight or on Sunday. I wonder if it’s back in his “separate guitar storage facility”?!

Finally in Bat Out Of Hell, Kasim took off his jacket and I could see why he hadn’t before as he was just wearing a T-shirt! I felt cold just looking at him!

And then, all too soon for me, it was time for Kasim to leave the stage!

Roll on Sheffield on Thursday!

(I lied! I felt VERY hot at this point!)

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