Four star

SAINT Barry is back in style with this latest eclectic offering.

The eponymous Mayflower refers to an apartment block and each song is dedicated to characters living there and the stories they have to tell.

And what an interesting bunch of people they are. There's the couple in Apartment 4J making a final effort to save their ailing marriage in Talk To Me.

And the devoted elderly couple in Apartment 6C, who plead with the younger people to look beyond their years and remember that they too once had a life in Not What You See.

With the gossiping elevator operator, the lonely woman who plays her music every night, the man who listens to it and wishes he could talk to her and people dreaming of a new start Come Monday and you basically have the A-Z of humanity.

This may sound at times like it should be on a Broadway stage complete with 150 dancers, men in brown and white brogues and women in dresses with fringes on the bottom.

Admittedly, the upbeat offerings do sound something like radio jingles.

But the ballads are as good as, if not better than, anything I have heard before and are Barry at his best.

When your childhood memories include Terry Wogan calling Barry 'Mandy Bandylegs' and ridiculing the musicmeister, it comes as a bit of a surprise to find that, hey, he is actually good.

Mock all you like Mr Wogan. Barry can do no wrong in my eyes.

SC