Mark Owen - Manchester Academy 3

If, as The Undertones proclaimed, teenage dreams are hard to beat then those formed in childhood are nigh on impossible to top. Back in the early 90s, childhood dreams revolved around five lads from Manchester who together formed Take That, a band that created a mould and set the standard for future generations of boy bands. A decade later and Mark Owen, the cute take-home-to-your-mother one, stands on stage in a less than packed Hop and Grape with the Cheshire Cat grin that adorned a million teenagers bedroom walls stretched across his face.

Owen, it should be recalled, on Take That’s implosion flirted with being an indie earth child, releasing the album ‘Green Man’ to mixed reviews. Lacking the song writing skills of Gary Barlow or the natural showmanship of Robbie Williams his career faded into the background until a win on Celebrity Big Brother thrust him back into the limelight. There followed a second album, renewed Smash Hits interest and the obligatory appearances on Saturday Morning Television but the transition from teen icon to credible musician proved difficult resulting in his forthcoming album, and the reason for the tour, being released on his self funded label Sedna.

‘I think we’ve played every Academy number going!’ laughs Owen from the stage in Academy 3, the smallest of the university’s venues. However, despite the downsizing Owen remains characteristically upbeat running through a set comprising of past singles, ‘Clementine’, ‘Four Minute Warning’ and ‘Making Out’ as well as a selection of album tracks. You’ve got to give him credit for trying but if it wasn’t for his boy band past, the majority of the audience wouldn’t be there and this is Owen’s main problem. Tonight’s crowd is made up almost exclusively of middle aged women, the first generation of Take That fans, who sing along word perfect in some doomed attempt to hang on to youth. If it was any one but Owen on stage they wouldn’t give him a second glance. Whilst he attempted to go in a different direction he ultimately remains trapped by his former self. The main problem is that musically it’s mediocre - not pop enough to appeal to ‘the kids’ and not distinct enough for ‘proper’ music fans resulting in at best a good pub band and at worst a band with the ‘ironic’ factor, possessing the same attraction as Hanson or Chesney Hawkes. Forever condemned to being a teenage icon, Owen seems trapped in limbo, eternally fated to play to the same handful of fans but it’s doubtful whether Brian McFadden or any of the subsequent Take That imitators will, ten years on, inspire such devotion.