Good Evening Duran Ballet!

I’m reliably informed by an audience member that when Duran Duran came on stage last night at Leeds (name of the bank it’s associated with deliberately removed) Arena one of the band said ‘Goodnight Newcastle’ - and had to apologise.  Blimey!

This is of course something of a cliché, but one usually associated with wasted rock bands doing massive tours and out of their minds on whatever.  But a veteran pop band doing a tour of UK enormodomes?

How difficult must it be to actually not know what city you’re in? There aren’t that many dates on the tour, presumably you get information from the tour manager, you get fans contacting you and old mates who want in on the guest-list mail and tweets and whatnot – and surely you can’t help seeing the odd sign out of the window of the tour bus?  So how do you actually prevent any of the information you’re being bathed in actually sinking in?  I'm beginning to think someone's not that bright...