Harry Styles at Meltdown Festival review: A once-in-a-lifetime night for Styles and his fans

The approach to the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall looked more like the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport last night. A gaggle of young women and girls with pleading eyes flanked the entrance queue, signs held aloft, begging for tickets. Some came alone, some came (rather ambitiously) in groups as large as 12. It’s something I always knew happened at gigs, but had never witnessed to this magnitude. Especially considering the chances of them scoring a ticket were exceedingly low.

With a capacity of 2,700, Harry Styles’s much-anticipated Meltdown Festival performance is one of the most intimate of his entire career. But perhaps that’s exactly why the hopeful young women were there. They knew it, I knew it, even Harry Styles knew it: last night was a once-in-a-lifetime affair.