THE PIPES, BUT NOT YET THE CHOPS:

She's red hot, but her soul is strictly sanitised: Despite powerful pipes, Duffy fails to catch fire like the vintage singers she apes (Kitty Empire, 12/14/08, The Observer)

Arrayed across the back of the stage, along with some of Duffy's six-piece band, is a string section, who play us in with vigour. A sparkly dais sits in front of the musicians, awaiting 5ft 2in of Welsh wind power. After a few bars of 'Rockferry', Duffy finally sashays on - her heels the stuff of chiropractors' nightmares, her little red dress the stuff of confectioners' nocturnal fantasies. She looks like a predatory bonbon. The scene could be Vegas or Paris or any TV studio in 1964; you half expect Dick Clark - the plastic host of the vintage US TV show American Bandstand - to appear stage right, applauding wildly.

Mindful of injury, Duffy picks her way purposefully across the stage. She keeps her voice teasingly in check for a couple of verses, then finally lets rip on the key change, stripping the paint off the circle. An appreciative shiver runs through the crowd, a mix of ages, genders and sexualities that attests to the commercial reach of this retro diva.

A year of hard touring has done nothing to blunt the force of Duffy's pipes; if anything, they have become more steely. As a performer, she is more polished too, swinging her microphone around like a handbag while the band take a rare solo. There is little movement to her - just an arm, aimed at the sky or the floor, or a pert bottom wiggle.

She leaves the dancing to two limber men in suits, who - sadly - don't lift Duffy up and carry her around as they would in an old-fashioned musical number. In a recent interview Duffy told of her plans for a Forties-themed party, celebrating an era when men 'were men' and women were 'all tits and teeth'. She is reviving the latter half of that tradition with gusto.