Stuart Morrison's verdict five stars.

The fact that the capital had served up a gloriously blue, yet freezing cold, evening was not lost on Lionel Richie.

"I was under the impression," he told the crowd, ‘" this was a summer concert – I was freezing back there." Why he should think such a thing on a late July evening in Edinburgh, was anybody’s guess, but, to his credit, he spent the following ninety minutes doing his best to bring the five thousand or so fans squeezed into the castle esplanade, to fever pitch.

Richie has been doing this for a fair while. He divided his fans into three groups. The first had loved the Commodores. The second had discovered him as a solo artist and the third had found his records in their parent’s collection. He satisfied all three groups in a show which unashamedly concentrated on the hits and was mercifully free of the "here is one from my new album" syndrome.

Kicking off with Running With the Night, his super slick band hardly put a foot wrong, although Penny Lover suffered from a harmonica part which belonged to a different key, at the very least. Perhaps the cold was at fault. That aside, the hits just kept coming. Commodores tunes such as Sunday Morning, Sail On and the effortlessly funky Brick House were received with as much acclaim as Stuck on You, Say You, Say Me, Dancing on the Ceiling and set closer, All Night Long. He does schmaltz like no other, as evidenced by the communal descent into a romantic trance triggered by Three Times a Lady and the iconic Hello. He encored with We Are the World, featuring children from the Edinburgh Playhouse Choir.