PERFORMING around Britain on the second leg of his Evolution tour, The X Factor's 2009 winner, Joe McElderry, promised a stunning show live and unplugged at York Barbican.

Adoring fans welcomed the South Shields singer with massive cheers, and his admission that this would be a "stripped back" acoustic performance didn’t diminish their fervour as he launched into Dancing With My Father.

McElderry’s vocal performance has developed further since his talent show debut, but his unconfident body language and nervous giggling meant his on-stage presence tended to suffer when he wasn’t singing.

His choice of material lacked diversity in his first set; all bar two songs, he said, were sad pieces about loss or people going away, but these dreary, downbeat numbers just didn’t fit well to his bubbly boy-next-door persona, making for quite a dull opening half.

Fortunately, the second saw a marked improvement, opening with what McElderry referred to as "Jukebox Joe": a segment where he and his band took requests from the audience.

This was easily the most entertaining part of the show as it allowed McElderry to demonstrate his range as a performer. His acoustic rendition of Uptown Funk in particular was fun and energetic, and he nailed pretty much everything the audience threw at him, before wrapping up with a few more favourites from his solo career and ending on his first single, Ambitions.

This was very much a show of two halves. While the first was mediocre at best, the second was far better, with the audience sending McElderry off to a standing ovation.