Apart from I’m afraid it’s spread to your liver and We’re going to have to let you go, there can be few phrases that strike dread into the heart more than the words Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Rick Parfitt Junior.

It’s particularly dangerous and irresponsible to suddenly make an announcement like that when there are 1600 people in a room with only one exit. I like to think I conduct myself with dignity and honour at all times, but had there been any young children present last night at this big corporate awards shindig at the Telford International Centre (it’s ‘International’, as far as I can make out, because it’s near Wales) I would gladly have elbowed them in the face if it had got me out of there quicker. People were going over the tables rather than round them. I’m pretty sure I saw a string quartet stoically playing on until they were engulfed in the deluge.

We’d been kettled under hot lights for about four hours and I’d been downing Bendicks After Dinner Mints like popcorn to mask the taste of the warm South African Merlot. Some bands must get used to coming on stage to the sound of a screaming crowd, but the audience is not usually running in the opposite direction. Rick Jr and the boys arrived to the sight of chairs being hurled aside and grown men scrambling over each other in a desperate bid for freedom.

About 90 minutes later, wandering back to the bar from the bogs, I heard a familiar noise and put my head around the door of the hall. The 500 or so people who hadn’t made it to the lifeboats were not only by the stage, they were on it. Posh frocks twirled on sweaty calves and ties were worn bandana-style round the head for the first time since the last day of school. They were leaping about like spring lambs. Somewhere in the mob the band were playing Rocking All Over the World and it sounded brilliant. It was a stupidly great party and I, stupidly, had missed it because I’d been talking about football with a bloke from Bristol.

So if there’s a lesson in this it’s probably that judging bands by their credibility or cool means that you’ll miss out on a lot of joyful dancing and uncontrollable grinning; and that even if it’s a dodgy chancer cranking out his dad’s greatest hits, and even if the audience are nearer their sixties than their twenties, there’s absolutely nothing better on a hot night than a rocking band and a heaving crowd.

Even, so it seems, in Telford.