…but I wouldn't have missed it for the world

If genius as either Confucius or Chairman Mao has so sanely said is 99 per cent perspiration and one per cent inspiration, then The Who are indubitably four raving roaring screeching psychedelic genii, because nobody, but nobody, sweats like they do. Unless perhaps it's their audience.

And last Saturday night the audience who sweated it out at £1 a head were 1,500 Sussex University students gathered recently as near as they could get to the four lime purple, scarlet and puce light figures who for the marginal cost of £1,200 pummelled electric guitars till the rising decibels made deafness a positive relief, pounded five drums as viciously if each was the hated head of a rival popstar, and bellowed such niceties as 'Touch me touch me' into mics swung frenziedly first as lassos then more and more frighteningly as last note nooses.

The whole experience, my first I must admit at a Pop ritual, made me feel like an atheist night if he took a sauna in Westminster Cathedral. This respectful sweaty church was a long way from the orgasmic experience a pop concert self titled the 'urban disco with uma lights' sets out to be.

The humble fifteen hundred packed in a way that made sardines in a tin envy their professionalism, stood silent and clammy, and worshipped.

And outside Falmer House where the concert took place, the hundreds of students who had not been able to buy or beg tickets lay spread on rather damp concrete and listened quietly to the mass hysteria two floors and a lot of status above them. For them it seemed to be enough.

For me, inside, it was enough when the men nearby began coolly 97 sorry not coolly, but calmly, to strip to the waist. Not in joy, or lust, just in mild discomfort. The drummer stripped to his underpants by the time the recital reached the end and the big new number 'Water Water.'

But then the drummer had room about him and water within reach, which none of the rest of us did. After surviving Roger Ruskin Spear's Giant Kinetic Wardrobe Of course you know Roger Ruskin Spear the amusing zany comedian founder member of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band currently accompanied by his collection of electrified friends) then the James Gang (billed I assure you, as that incredibly tight American three-piece group on their first-ever British tour).

Midnight did eventually come, and with it the incredibly well organised late transport coaches for all and none turned into pumpkins down the lower road, and as I left the Disco still throbbing, I naturally wouldn't have missed it for the world