AXL Rose, the legendary frontman of rockers Guns N Roses, has a reputation to uphold.

He is the man whose punctuality is so poor that it has led to several riots over the years.

So no-one who travelled to Manchester Arena should have been surprised when he and the collection of jobbing musicians he calls the band failed to arrive onstage until nearly 11pm.

People had already started to leave and there was a lot of unrest in the crowd.

Opener Chinese Democracy did little to lift people’s spirits but the venue, which was little more than three-quarters full, really came to life with three classics — Welcome to the Jungle, It’s So Easy and Mr Brownstone.

These songs, all from the band’s immortal first album Appetite for Destruction, were so good I actually thought Axl was miming.

He might look older and has been sporting a daft handlebar moustache for a while now but he has definitely not lost it.

It is just unfortunate that he has always been stubborn in his insistence on arriving on stage so late.

A 1.15am finish, in my opinion, is a complete joke. The streams of people leaving early, even from the very beginning of the show, were a testament to that.

The hits were fantastic but did not make up for the everything else that the audience was put through.

But with Axl Rose you should know what to expect.