This Liza Minnelli thing – it’s so part and parcel of being a pouff, that it must be encoded in our chromosomes, twinned with the one for Barbra Streisand. I bought the tickets to see Liza’s return in the Albert Hall when they came on sale back in February – outrageously priced, but it made no difference. I had to see her; not enthusiastically, not out of a desire to enjoy myself, but in the grip of a curious reptile-brain automatic take-me-to-my-leader compulsion. I had to confirm that she exists on this planet. That I could see the Next Best Thing To Judy with my own eyes, hear those lungs in action, and watch her move in the same way as her mother, the same front-heavy louche swagger on impossibly long legs under an extraordinarily tiny abdomen.

There was something very weird about the evening. I’m not referring to the sight of a woman with titanium hips in a basque getting away with it. It’s the culture of fame, and the absence of art. Bad dancers poorly lit, lousy, lazy musical arrangements so at least three songs managed to sound the same, with a sound quality more like a basement cabaret act than a massive auditorium.

Liza’s Sally Bowles was always too much of a star for me in the film Cabaret – it was implausible that someone of that quality would have been stuck in depressed Berlin. Unfortunately, 30 years later, Liza would not be a surprising find in the Kit Kat Klub. Occasional glimpses of genius, lots of balls and schmaltz and professional ways of winging it, smothered in a camp sentimental

amateurishness. Amateur? Surely not Liza? You betcha. Imagine a panto done in the local community hall. In the programme there’d be full-page ads from “Byrne’s the Butchers” and the like wishing everyone a happy Christmas and thanking everyone for their custom.

Well, in Liza’s community, the same spirit prevails, only it’s Michael Jackson and Tony Bennett putting in the full-page ads in the programme. Her famous friends pack the hall as if the community of mature A-list celebrity is rallying to support a worthy cause. In Liza’s world, it is so important she’s back where she belongs, under the spotlight. And she assumes that everyone else feels exactly the same way, and thanks us profusely and swears her “intense” love for us.

The central motif of the show was of a woman in love, back from addiction hell and grave illness into the loving restorative arms of a darling new husband, whom she eventually gobbles up with a big Frenchie, to great cheers. The triumph of love over adversity, of courage over fate – with a momma like Judy, of course she’s fucked up. Judy was a diva, not a mother; she was bred by MGM to be a flawed goddess, not a mortal with feelings. So here comes her daughter speaking of the importance of crying, and doing a cracking version of ‘Crying’ to boot. So far, so... erm, authentic.

But here’s the weird bit. One cannot tell if Liza is parodying herself or not. Intelligence of any sort has never been noticeable in her public persona; she remains a gushing six-year-old in make-believe mode in front of a mirror with a feather boa, thanking publicly her fabulous famous friends who are so dear to her and so kind.

Her wonderful performance in Cabaret was, I suspect, as much guided by good editing and direction than her own innate nous. And I’m not sure she’s done anything really good since. What seems to sustain her is her extraordinarily passionate energy, her fabulousness, her camp sensibility. It’s a sensibility that gay men resonate to; we too did that feather boa thing in the mirror when we were six. Didn’t we? Didn’t we see our mothers as other-worldly and divine, like Judy? Isn’t the camp thing all about honouring style and glamour and putting on a smile, even if we’re dying inside? Isn’t it essentially about falseness, a gallows-humour mask, a glittering defence against acknowledging our aloneness? And isn’t it also about letting that mask slip, artfully? Didn’t we love Judy because she was so transparently miserable but managed to convey it through her art so our hearts broke too? Is it any wonder that it was when the pint-sized wonder was buried that queens started getting bolshie in the Stonewall bar?

And what can be lonelier than to be loved for being fabulously false and not for being a sad old woman? Even the broadsheets here have commented on her new husband being “tidy around the house”; the extraordinary pomp of the wedding, with little Graham Norton wetting his pants in ecstasy over being invited, has more to do with Elton John and Liberace than any heterosexual man’s idea of a good time.

The programme announces that David Gest proudly presents Liza Minnelli; he’s her promoter and producer. It’s as if he has created a queen’s fantasy world for her to inhabit, in which she feels at home – remember, her Dad was rumoured to be bisexual, at the very least. The gobsmacking thing is that she teases us with the gossip. When she calls for a towel during her lengthy show, a handsome man comes on; she comments that he’s Mohammed, has been with her for twenty-one years, is fabulous, and David thinks so too. David thinks so too?

I wish it didn’t matter to me. She’s only a middle-aged American singer. I wish the show had been better. I hated hearing Cabaret’s ‘Mein Herr’ played from the 30-year-old soundtrack and watching her mime badly to it. I hated wondering if her foghorn of a voice was in tune or not, so I could discern a melody when she did sing. I wish that she had toned her performance down to a level approaching mortal at some stage, so I could have been moved by her. I hated realising that it was Judy I really wanted to see, not her silly, battered, but brave daughter playing at being fabulous.