Lily parties on

The LDN singer and her fans go underground for fancy dress extravaganza

11 May 2009 - Like any good party; once the idea of fancy dress is involved and people have decided to make the effort, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a good night.

And for a girl who entered the music scene with a track about her home town, LDN, tonight's theme was very appropriate: stations on the London Underground.

Fans dressed as Angels, or in clown suits to represent Piccadilly or Oxford Circus, roamed round Portobello Road market from early this afternoon waiting for the My Space team to arrive and whisk away the first arrivals to the gig's secret venue - West London's Tabernacle.

View Lily Allen gig gallery

The outfits varied from tokenistic nods, to the truly inventive including a man dressed in green with a packet of ham rotating around his neck (Turnham Green) and a life size Paddington Bear (Paddington).

Lily herself wasn't to be outdone by her creative fans, appearing on stage in a corset, bustle and grey wig as Victoria (HRH.)
 
But once the excitement and comparisons had died down and Lily had discarded her wig, it was business as usual in the tiny venue.

"You get people like Lily Allen who come here and do a free gig for the fans which I think is tops." Lily Allen fan

It wasn’t the first time Lily had performed at the Tabernacle.

She told the crowd she made her first ever stage appearance at the venue at the age of 5, apparently in a rubbish role – either a frog or a boy – in a pantomime of Sleeping Beauty.

The pop star was certainly centre stage tonight though.

She opened, appropriately, with Everyone’s At It, as it was the first taste of the new album, It’s Not Me, It’s You, that she gave to fans through her MySpace site last October.

Musical highlights included an unexpected drum and bass break thrown into her hit Smile, perhaps to ease the transition into the beat-y single The Fear, the section she described as "lounge" when the acoustic guitars were brought out for He Wasn't There, and the seamless segue from the Kaiser Chiefs cover Oh My God into Everything's Just Wonderful.

One fan said Lily's decision to hold a fancy dress show was a "great thing to do".

She added: "You get people out there like Britney Spears and as good as she maybe, she doesn't sing, she mimes.

"Then you get people like Lily Allen who come here and do a free gig for the fans which I think is tops."

It was Lily's natural charm though, that seemed to make the most impact on the crowd.

She may have earned a few boos for lighting up a cigarette on stage, but whether through sharing her wine with the front row, checking out her fans costumes or encouraging the dancing during her cover of Britney’s Womanizer, she captivated the already devoted audience.

And as the cameras were allowed in tonight, for fans to make their own records of the evening, there will no doubt be plenty of feel good snapshots on a certain website later.

Lucy O'Doherty