He and 10 other musicians spent two-and-a-half hours showcasing his new album and rummaging through his back catalogue, and two hours of that time passed in one solid block before the encores - two hours of jazzy, ethnic pop and busy, international polyrhythms; two hours during which Simon hardly paused to speak to the audience, but played song after song after song; two hours of sitting on hard theatre seats, unless we wanted to stand up and risk a ticking off by the Apollo's security staff. Frankly, I don't know how Simon, at 58, had the stamina for it. There was the odd change of pace - the a cappella intro to "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes", a gossamer guitar duet on "The Teacher", an incense-scented Eastern take on "Bridge over Troubled Water" - but I could have done with the sound of silence a little earlier. On Monday, Paul Simon put on his first British show since he was here promoting Rhythm Of The Saints in 1991 He was determined to make up for lost time.

He and 10 other musicians spent two-and-a-half hours showcasing his new album and rummaging through his back catalogue, and two hours of that time passed in one solid block before the encores - two hours of jazzy, ethnic pop and busy, international polyrhythms; two hours during which Simon hardly paused to speak to the audience, but played song after song after song; two hours of sitting on hard theatre seats, unless we wanted to stand up and risk a ticking off by the Apollo's security staff. Frankly, I don't know how Simon, at 58, had the stamina for it. There was the odd change of pace - the a cappella intro to "Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes", a gossamer guitar duet on "The Teacher", an incense-scented Eastern take on "Bridge over Troubled Water" - but I could have done with the sound of silence a little earlier. The real Simon fans, however, were made of sterner stuff. Short of Art Garfunkel turning up to do the harmonies on "Homeward Bound", there wasn't much else they could have hoped for from the concert, but they kept calling for more They, too, were making up for lost time. Simon had spent much of the 1990s slaving over The Capeman, a Broadway musical based on the true story of a murder in 1950s New York.

The production was dogged with problems, culminating in a picket outside the theatre by protesters who felt that Simon had treated the killer too sympathetically. The show closed after just a few performances and the spin-off album, Songs From The Capeman, was barely acknowledged by the public. As if to reinforce the notion that The Capeman was just a blip in a career that had been synonymous with consistency, this year Simon released a greatest hits compilation, Shining like a National Guitar, and followed it with You're the One, his first new album, bar Songs from the Capeman, since 1990. Its opening lines are a statement of intent: "Somewhere in a burst of glory/ Sound becomes a song/ I'm bound to tell a story/ That's where I belong".