Arts Diary: SUMMER POPS McFly Central Docks NOW BOOKING MUSIC Carl Davis, Willard White & the Halle Orchestra/ International Eisteddfod, Llangollen.

Byline: ADRIAN BUTLER

IF YOU'RE a McFly fan, you'll have been dreaming about this concert for weeks.

Then again, if you're a McFly fan, there probably isn't much weighing on your mind apart from the science test on Tuesday.

Packing out the Big Top last night were most of Liverpool's seven-to-14-year-old girls, and one boy who kept poking me with his inflatable guitar.

They'd all come to hear Britain's biggest boyband, named after the hero of a film released about 10 years before their fans were born (under the same principle, Take That would be 'Corleone', and the Beatles would have had to choose something like 'Mrs Bambi'.) Last night McFly played a selection of their own likeable, Brian Wilson and Merseybeat-influenced songs, taking in It's All About You, 5 Colours in Her Hair and Obviously.

Throughout Tom and Danny leapt gleefully around the stage. Dougie was a bit more downbeat, although he seemed to cheer up when he got to squirt the audience with a water pistol. Meanwhile Harry looked jealously on, although his drumkit did lift into the air at the end.

Despite these fun touches, on Sunday night the band were a bit ragged. They need to tighten up links between their songs, and involve the audience a bit more. Here, though, are a band no one can really dislike.

And listen to Tom taking the younger members of the audience through the conventions of a pop concert: 'We're going to go backstage, and if you shout and scream loud enough we might come on and play a few more songs.' What parent could disapprove THE charismatic film composer and conductor, Carl Davis, led the Halle to support the Jamaican bass-baritone Sir Willard White in last night's fabulous closing concert of the 59th Musical Eisteddfod.

Yet glittering celebrity apart - and soprano Lesley Garrett with New Zealand Baritone Jonathan Lemalu had earlier in the week wowed audiences - the event really belonged to the hundreds of participants from all over the world The huge crowds had been drenched at the beginning but soon the sun had his hat on all over the festival site and by the Friday evening of the thunderous Celtic Fusions concert folk were in the mood for a hoolee.

And ironically it was the Welsh band, Mabon, who kick-started the show in fine form with a blistering session of traditional music that swept up the muse from Ireland, Scotland, Brittany and Galicia in Spain and a bit of home-grown Welsh imagination. Then, to roars of welcome, the young dancers from the Loughgiel Folk Dance Band in Northern Ireland - who had already won the best children's folk dance award - joined forces with their elders for a corking demonstration of Irish dancing supported by a band that almost lifted the canvas off the giant tent.

Youngsters of the Kiltearn Feis Rois Fiddlers group from Easter Ross in Scotland then swiftly took up the baton but the real surprise of the night was the Le Bagad de Lann, Bihoue massed pipers from Brittany (all navy personnel), who stirred the passions of the multi-racial crowd.

It was perverse and rude, though, and more than a little embarrassing, that certain members of the audience - who perhaps were repelled by the vibrant sound of the pipes - thought it perfectly acceptable to get up mid-tune and shuffle along the aisles to the exits. This example of cultural ignorance is out of place in such a spectacular forum as this Eisteddfod - and next year's president, Terry Waite, already campaigning for it to be given UK national television coverage.

He reckons it should be on a par with Glastonbury and certainly the performers deserve such wider exposure, and respect LEW BAXTER

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Danny Jones from McFly Picture: DAN ISTITENE