The ticket for this gig cost as much as a medium sized African village earns in a year. It bought access to a powerful but, for me, emotionally unengaging performance. There were moments when the dreadful Wembley Arena had the same atmosphere as an empty Wetherspoons pub at 11.30 on a Monday morning. Try it sometime. This was when the dreaded “here are half a dozen tracks from our new album” was announced. OKish songs with a lot of Who mannerisms were met with polite applause.

The rapture was saved for the ones everyone had come to hear. Storming versions of tracks like Won’t get fooled again and Teenage Wasteland allowed you to understand why they carry on playing. It’s also their problem. What do you do when you wrote your best material 30-40 years ago? The Who’s solution is to carry on playing it and throw in the new stuff for an audience that wants the old ones.This clash was emphasised by video projections of the band from the mid 60s at the start of the set and clips from Quadrophenia. They were setting themselves in amber and reminding us of Sting’s existence was just not necessary.

There is a PhD to be written about The Who and English masculinity. My guess would be that the bulk of the audience stopped buying music between 1975 and ’82 except for the odd Paul Weller or Ocean Colour Scene album. I got the feeling that most of them knew a lot more about plumbing and soccer than I do and that the music had something to do with both their youth and their Englishness. It was about 80% male. More women went to see Kraftwerk!

The band still has an appetite for its work and tonight’s performance shows it can still deliver an impressive set. It was a brush with a little bit of music history.