Some things you do because you feel that you should try them at least once. That explains why I went to the ballet, saw an opera and wept tears of horror through a West End musical.

The same type of impulse for self improvement prompted me to go and see Bob Dylan last night. “See” is quite the wrong word. My seat was literally as far from the stage as it was possible to be. I’d forgotten my glasses and could just about discern six tiny figures on a stage three hundred yards away. For all I know it could have been Bob Monkhouse or Bob Mortimer up there.

I have the mandatory three or four Dylan albums and a couple of greatest hits. I think this is about 3% of his total output. Some of it is as good as is claimed. The rest I can take it or leave it. But I approached the gig with an open mind having been told that he can be an astonishing live performer.

Dylan and his band were very tight. He is renowned for radically reworking his tunes. This can take unexpected directions. One track which I didn’t recognise was done in the style of Belgian dinner jazz pioneered by Bill Bailey. It didn’t work for me.

He threw in a crowd pleasing Like A Rolling Stone and finished with All Along The Watchtower. They sounded like covers by a really good pub band blessed with a singer with an incredible gift for mimickry.

The audience was surprisingly young. But not even this could overcome the barriers that Wembley imposes on any musician trying to create an atmosphere. A more sterile, unrock venue could not be designed.

Well, that’s another cultural item ticked off the “to do” list.