JOHN LAWSON The impossibly-beautiful Louise wowed a sell-out Theatre Royal crowd with the full range of her greatest hits – both before and after Eternal.

JOHN LAWSON

The impossibly-beautiful Louise wowed a sell-out Theatre Royal crowd with the full range of her greatest hits – both before and after Eternal.

The girl has true soul – a love of the genre honed from her Motown-loving parents – and she delivers every number with exuberance and joy.

Not for Louise the moody, smouldering approach. She beams her incredibly white smile and encourages everyone to love the music as much as she does.

While she's no Dusty Springfield, she's certainly the nearest we now have to a white girl with a black R&B voice.

If there was any doubt about this it was dispelled by her Motown medley – For Once in My Life, Signed, Sealed Delivered and Sweetest Hangover – three numbers written well before most of her audience was born. And the crowd, many of them genuine pre-teen screamers, lapped it up.

The best was saved till last: her infectious latest hit Stuck in the Middle With You, the old Stealer's Wheel classic, had the whole auditorium on its feet.

Earlier, support acts Myla and 4-Play did their best to warm up the crowd.

4-Play, a garage and rap outfit who formed up at Bow Boys School in East London three years ago have just signed a publishing deal for their self-penned material with the hugely-influential Zomba Music. With a single out in June, we could see plenty of them in future. Dance act Myla, I suspect, we will not.