NINETIES nostalgia is big right now and 25 years after Boyzone first broke onto the scene, they are still pulling in big crowds.

The Thank you and Goodnight tour has been billed as their farewell tour and they say it is the last time we will be seeing the boys (though they’re not really boys any more).

The album is the band’s sixth, and they promise their last, but the show is more about the hits from the nineties than their recent work.

As Ronan (Keating) tells the crowd early on, “you didn’t come to see us play a load of songs you don’t know”.

Now in their forties, the now-four-piece band (completed by Keith Duffy, Mikey Graham and Shane Lynch) look like they’re having a lot of fun.

The whole night is a bit of a sweetly sentimental trip down memory line – much to the delight of the audience.

They know what their fans want and definitely deliver it.

The images flashing on the screen of their early days reminds us just how young they were when they first “arrived off the boat” in 1993

Told to dance like it’s 1996, we’re treated to pretty much all of the old hits from their first three “classic albums”, as well as a couple of Keating’s solo tracks.

From their very first hit, Love Me For A Reason, to their first number one Words all their best-known numbers are included, building up to a jaunty climax with some of their more upbeat tracks, almost guaranteed to keep you humming on the way home.

There’s nothing too flashy about the staging but it really does take you right back to their mid to late nineties heydays.

They still can’t really dance, but that was always one of their charms.

It’s not quite the same without Stephen (Gately), who died in 2009 from a pulmonary oedema resulting from an undiagnosed heart condition.

But a section of the show dedicated to a tribute in memory of their friend and former bandmate is genuinely touching.

Including a

Dream (A single released last year from the new album) which features vocals by Gately, performed from a stage at the back of the arena is a fitting tribute.

The band was playing at the newly named Utilita Arena, Newcastle (formerly the Metro Radio Arena), where they will be playing an extra night on Wednesday, February 13.