IN TERMS of contrasts, this trip to Sheffield provided a stark example.

First you have the Scissor Sisters: a bright, loud, lively, devil-may-care, gyrating rock-disco machine. Then you have the Hallam FM Arena: a soulless, desolate warehouse on the edge of Sheffield city centre - windswept and bleak.

So the question arises, did the Scissors manage to turn up the heat and bring a bit of life to the huge exhibition centre?

Well, bless them, they did.

As the lights went down in the arena, a sea of mobile phones sparkled around the venue. The band exploded on to the stage and leapt into a couple of numbers from new album Ta-Dah.

Favourites Laura and Take Your Mama got the crowd - at least on the exhibition floor - moving.

Co-frontman Jake Shears took the lead in the early numbers, before the irrepressible Ana Matronic started shaking her money-maker.

The pair proved that size isn't the most important thing for the Sisters, deriding the sanitised venue and its officious staff.

"I believe if you go to a rock concert you should be able to smoke whatever the hell you god'dam want to," Jake declared, referring to the arena blanket ban on smoking.

"A lot of the places we've been playing on this tour, you can't even stand up to dance - and that's stupid. If I can't dance, it's not my revolution," Ms Matronic chipped in.

Hear hear to that Ana.