ROGER DALTREY took the stage at Deeside on Saturday looking remarkably like Rupert Bear — a resemblance suggested by a combination of his white baseball boots, immaculate white jacket, and scarf loosely knotted at his throat and falling to the waist.

Somehow this sense of little-boy innocence persisted throughout the set, as Daltrey almost skipped about the stage at times, actually running on the spot throughout practically all of a spectacular performance of Won't Get Fooled Again.

As they covered practically their whole musical career, from early numbers like Substitute through Tommy and Quadrophenia to their latest album, it became increasingly hard to believe that they have been around since most of the audience were in infant school.

It was almost like being in some time warp as Daltrey,

Townshend and Co. powered about the stage with all their early energy apparently intact. Only the rest of the world had moved on another 15 years or so.

But the gap is there; as Daltrey sang about My Generation to the sons and daughters of those it was written for, the words of the later Who Are You took on an almost poignant significance.

As if the band themselves were finding it hard to come to terms with being taken up as the spokesmen of a generation which is not their own.

The ironies of the situation seemed to increase as the evening wore on, till the moment at the end of Won't Get Fooled Again where Daltrey reversed his on-the-spot running and it became a Nazi goosestep.

I could not help suspecting that its significance to him was the direct opposite of its meaning to the many skinheads in the audience.

But perhaps the most incredible thing about the amazing evening was the music itself. The Who were virtually re-born for a new generation with the films Tommy and Quadrophenia, and I had expected this and their age to have had a dampening effect on their stage presence.

In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Granted, the wild orgies of smashed equipment have gone, but judging by Saturday's performance it is because the power of their performance no longer needs it, not because they are getting old or tired.

S.J.K.