In the television series Eli Stone, in which George Michael has played himself, the title character's brain aneurysm often manifests itself in visions of the singer. But as a noisy Bell Centre crowd communed with a flesh-and-blood Michael last night, the only ailment in the room was good old benign nostalgia.

That much was evident as about 12,400 Michael maniacs leaped out of their seats in ecstatic unison during two Wham! songs in the first set - I'm Your Man and Everything She Wants.

The 45-year-old singer was playing to a crowd made up mostly of his own age group, and this was the soundtrack of their youth. For most of the evening, they were exactly like a mob of seniors at a Rolling Stones concert.

Fall Out Boy fans? Your time will come sooner than you think.

The eye-poppingly staged Michael show, then, was one for the believers. How pumped was this crowd? They started screaming during the taped public service announcement about the smoking law and cellphones.

Even those who paid the $200-plus top price were not bothered in the least by the singer being 50 minutes late in starting, or by his taking a premature 20-minute break after the first one-hour set.

By that point, to be fair, his jacket was impressively soaked through, a sweaty testimony to the singer's promise early in the show to work hard to make up for his long absence from the stage.

Michael is certainly no longer "the biggest pop star in the world," as The Gazette called him in 1988, when he last played here at the Olympic Stadium in front of 26,000 people. But his sense of showmanship is still with him, as he demonstrated in a thumping Spinning the Wheel, and his voice is still in fighting trim, as evidenced by soulful performances of One More Try and The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

To skeptics, the lyrics sound as vapid as ever (Too Funky has not aged well), the synth-disco arrangements are still grating and many of the tunes continue to lack presence (Where's the hook in Hard Day, anyway?). Still, you'd have to be pretty mean-spirited not to buy into last night's high-energy version of Faith. Even the late, great Bo Diddley must have been smiling somewhere at this cheeky use of his trademark beat.

If the greatness of a show must be measured solely by the excitement of its crowd, Michael's return can only be considered a triumph.