Roger Daltrey review, Teenage Cancer Trust: The Who star bows out from charity with powerhouse performance

In recent years, Roger Daltrey has become a “divisive figure”. Yes, he’s been bullish and belligerent in his misguided support of Brexit, but he’s impossible not to love. Not least because, over 24 years, he’s been the ringleader, curator and driving force behind the annual Albert Hall Teenage Cancer Trust shows, performing more than any other act – both solo and with The Who – and helping to raise £32m for specialised NHS units to care for young sufferers.

Tonight, before standing down from this selfless role for good, Daltrey performs one final show, Ovation, joined by a selection of artists he’s cajoled into playing over the years. “This ovation is for all the unsung heroes, all the people that have been there unconditionally,” he says, taking to a “bloody death trap” of a stage as he introduces the night. Besides the rank of teenage sufferers and survivors who make several moving appearances, though, most of the accolades shower down upon the main man himself. For all four hours of the show, the evening’s stars reminisce about Daltrey’s influence and gruff magnanimity while, in pre-filmed messages, Paul McCartney plays him a four-second song called “Thank You Roger” and Steve Coogan declares him “a good bloke” – and The Who “The Kinks for welders”.

The night starts strong. “We’re the warm-up act,” announces Paul Weller, settling in with his stool-bound band for an opening half-hour of pastoral folk balladry, country blues and – no doubt to the befuddlement of anyone who last saw him in ’77 – bouts of bongo and jazz flute. It’s a graceful, if surprisingly rootsy showing for an artist in the midst of one of the most brilliantly experimental late-career runs this side of Bowie, and as “Wild Wood” creeps from the undergrowth to hushed reverence, the tone is immaculately judged.

Apologising to Pete Townshend for “stealing all his tunes for my first album”, Weller invites Daltrey back on for a cover of The Who’s “So Sad About Us” that they haven’t had time to rehearse: “That’s what makes it fun!” Daltrey beams. A similarly crisp and brisk “That’s Entertainment” has you pitying whoever has to follow it, particularly when it turns out to be Stereophonics’ king of beige advert rock, Kelly Jones. Arriving solo and typically tortured, Jones reaches for the heartstrings but manages only the occasional pluck; “You’re My Star” touchingly relives his own family’s brush with cancer. Otherwise, his between-song stories about shopping for his wedding suit with Weller and being given a lift to the first TCT gig in Noel Gallagher’s Rolls-Royce are far more interesting than dreary, oversold fare like “Maybe Tomorrow”.

On the topic of stripped back soul-baring, Jones could learn a thing or two from Eddie Vedder. Though the Pearl Jam singer takes to his stool with the demeanour (and pork pie hat) of an unassuming folkie, there’s an in-built dynamism to the songs (both his and Pearl Jam’s) that he flays to country-punk bones tonight. He even drops a sly bit of “Pinball Wizard” into “Far Behind” and just about gets away with it.