Wow... the gig on Monday night at Newcastle arena was fantastic.   Support came courtesy of the Barenaked Ladies, who were even better than I was expecting them to be.  They had most of the audience in hysterics by the end of their set, and they even did a little rap about being in Newcastle in the Beautiful North.   But anyway.  I'll stop talking about BNL cos I know there are those on this list with an aversion to them.  The only other thing I will say is that they did seem to give The South a bit more energy than with other support acts I've seen, but I guess that could have just been coincidence.

TBS seemed to be on pretty good form.  Paul and Dave came on grinning their heads off, and there was quite a bit of between-songs banter from Paul. Jacqui was looking very nice (and quite a bit slimmer) in a long skirt, but Hamster was doing a good impression of being stoned or at least pretty drunk.  I swear I thought he was going to throw up at one point.  He seemed to survive though and it didn't affect his voice at all.

The main surprises to the set list were that they didn't play The Slide, Liars Bar, or Woman in the Wall, but they did play Song for Whoever and Let Love Speak Up Itself (hurray!).  Dave announced before SFW that they hadn't played it for a long time so he was sorry if he f***ed it up, but he was fine.

They opened with Old Red Eyes, and then (in an extremely approximate order):

Pretenders to the Throne
Don't Marry Her
Have Fun
Lure of the Sea
We Are Each Other
How Long's a Tear Take to Dry
Dumb
Look What I Found in my Beer
You Keep It All In
Rotterdam
36D
Perfect 10
Song For Whoever
Everybody's Talkin
Blackbird on the Wire

and finished with a slightly elongated Your Father and I during which the brass section came down to the front of the stage and waved their instruments about.

They came on for an encore with the London Community Gospel Choir, and did

One Last Love Song
The Table
Let Love Speak Up Itself
Good As Gold

I think the best part about having the Gospel choir is that they carry the choruses, which frees Paul up to do his falsetto bits which sound really good.

Let Love... was a very extended version, with yet another variation on the ending (still had the usual "from the... to the..." bits in, but with kind of twiddly bits from the choir as well) which was excellent. Good as Gold was longer as well - basically it was played through about one and a half times, but with the last half a time being just instrumental so the singers could dance.  Brilliant stuff.
Oh, and there was a towel fight as well.  I can't remember how it started (Paul threw his at somebody - Gary or Steady I think) who then threw it back, and it escalated into a lot of towels being chucked around the stage at random band members...