ALLAN BESWICK

The "get-in" takes three hours and has to be accurate to the finest detail such as which particular point each of over 100 lamps lights the stage. These are arranged in the time-honoured way of the lighting engineer (Dave Bartlett) sitting at his console and shouting " left a bit" and the like to some poor sucker (me for seven nights) on top of a ladder; the sound man Dave lowton is no better. He spends 50 per cent of his time worrying about the fuzz on his horns.

While all this is going on Steve Swithin, the tour manager and a Preston man to boot, is checking into a hotel and arranging a late meal for his boys, although to be fair Mike did say he once saw Steve carrying a box. Mike and steve arrive at the venue at 4.30 so that every musical instrument can be checked for sound and tuning. On this tour there was a collection of guitars, a harmonica, a madolin, an electric grand piano, a synthesiser, a sandoori and a accordian plus various effects pedals which extended the range of sounds to infinity. Mike plays every one throughout the evening.

The show starts with a capacity audience wherever they go at 7.30 and never ends before 11.15. On stage mike stands alone, and for most of the three-hour concert he stands centre stage illuminated by two carbon arc spotlights - the loneiest place in the world if things aren't going right. With Harding they always go right. His audiences has paid 'hard earned brass' to see him and is not about to see it wasted.

He takes the mood of the evening from its starting point of acute stomach pains brought on by massive overdoses of giggling, to almost tears with his introduction to a new song 'Bombers Moon'. " This song took me a lifetime to write and I dedicated it to my mother who was a wife, a widow and a mother in less than a year." Nobody missed the point.

As the auditorium lights come on Mike is back in the dressing room getting changed ready to meet his fans at the stage door where he treats every one to his warm, gentle humour and his infectious chuckle whilst the crew starts dismantling the set and loading it all back into the lorries ready for the next morning. Once everything is packed away it's back to the hotel for that meal and 'unwind time' which could very easily be mistaken for a boozers' convention. As they say in the worst Sunday newspapers I made my excuses and left, but not before I witnessed and incident which I will remember to my dying day.

Jim Heaton (chief humper and programme seller) believes in using all the facilities supplied to him by nature and spent many hours of his otherwise misspent youth balancing brushes on his chin, a harmless pastime, you'll agree. However onenight after a particularly 'successful' bout of ale-quaffing he dicided to bring this talent right up to date by attempting to balance an industrial hoover on his chin. Ged Williams, who is a helpful sort of chap and has an eye for the theatrical, dicided it would be a more spectacular achievement with the hoover turned on and did just that. The whole incident cannot have lasted more than a few minutes but my admiration for Jim was sealed - it is not every man who, whilst drunk and balancing and 'active' industrial hoover on his chin, can articulate every single swear word not in the Oxford English Dicionary without pausing for breath or repeating himself.