Celine. Enough Said.

Enter stage left, one Mathew Cleaver, tired as all buggary, inbound from China's Beijing, and send him, sans sleep, to Dubai's Festival City to witness the superstar diva for the thinking man's crumpet; Celine Dion. Live in concert, at her first and only performance in the Middle East, on her Taking Chances World Tour 2008-2009.

Fresh out of contractual Las Vegas enrichment, Celine has been unleashed on the popstress deprived world and she is fricken BRILLIANT. Starting in South Africa, three weeks ago, the UAE is her second stop on the year long tour, that will see her visit your Japans, your Switzerlands, your Australias, your Americas and basically everywhere in between. I am prepared to take your wrath of criticism and cynacism for all your penned up dislike for the Canadian warbler, however, until you have seen her perform live, you can not judge me for attending!

My grand amigo Daniel had asked me to go, and to make up numbers in the 10,000 strong crowd, I decided that I'd be a fools man to turn him, and fellow mutual acquaintance Brigitte, down! So a long night flight back from Mainland China, and over 24hours awake, we arrived at the Four Seasons Golf Course in Dubai at 5:30pm to claim our spot for the evenings festivities. We had tickets for the Gold Zone, as the only other person with more desire for Mrs Dion-Angelil is Daniel, and so we wanted to ensure we had the best line of sight we could. We thought it best to pop into the adjoining shopping mall (everywhere in Dubai must have an obligatory mutli-level shopping mall attached) for some dinner before the concert, and Daniel proceded to immediately lose our tickets. After a few heart-palpitatingly-stressful minutes of perhaps saying goodbye to our rather expensive investment to potentially nothing, and retracing every step in the mall, twice, we discovered that Elizabeth, a delightfully honest Kenyan waitress from Costa Coffee had found them, and handed them in to security. We scurried to the venue entrance to ensure we wouldnt lose our tickets once more. Needless to say, until then, I was now in charge of ticket possession!

With her French-Canadian precision, Celine graced the stage at 8:30 sharp, and belted nothing but the finest of hits to us mere morsals in the audience, lapping her up like a bread roll mops up gravy. She grabbed every ambitious note perfectly as she sang her way through her trifle of songs, however there were a few of her little gems that werent sung, and were very much missed. Rest assured, we got her powerhouse Titanic performance, which I know you will all be most relieved about!

On stage in an outfit we could only describe as a silver sequined mini-dress with a leather boot-slash-pant (is that a bant, or a poot?) ensemble, she looked every inch the dazzling superstar we were expecting. She was on fine form for her Celinism's, including her note-grabbing arm actions, coupled with her meaningful and so-sincere-it-hurts interludinal banter. I dont think anyone told her that 90% of the people living in the UAE are actually non-Arabic speaking expats, so her little shukran's (thank you) after every second song, whilst may have been culturally sensitive, went entirely beyond our comprehension! However, mix all of these traditional behavioural indicators of Celine together and you definately have the recipe for success!

Would I go again? I most certainly would! Just as long as she bought along her dancers, who incidently, weren't overly bad looking either!

To sum her up in a song, some might say she was River Deep Mountain High.