Just hours after a leaked video of two members of One Direction apparently smoking wacky baccy caused tabloid outrage, a grey fug of smoke appears from behind the stage to descend over the stadium. Alas, this probably isn't the band having a last-minute toke or their furious management setting fire to the stash, but a standard showbiz technique to add some atmosphere to an open-air concert in the pouring rain.
In fact, the scandal that has caused the first sign of any dent in the heavily tattooed boys' otherwise carefully controlled, squeaky-clean image is notable by its absence. There probably isn't any hitherto unknown darker meaning behind the Why Don't We Go There lyric, "I wanna be addicted".
At one point, Harry Styles does fall flat on his back and starts laughing uncontrollably, but this is down to a puddle of rainwater rather than a psychedelic experience. Indeed, the only hint of anything other than business as usual comes when Liam Payne makes a risque quip about needing to change his jeans because they're too tight and hurriedly adds, "Steady on, there. No more media attention please."
There may be trouble ahead, not least from parents, but it will clearly take more than a whiff of scandal to blunt 1D's appeal. The world's biggest-selling boy band are the glaring exception to the theory that pop music doesn't mean as much to young people as it used to. Here, playing to 52,000 of the few million screamers that will see their latest world tour, they generate such hysteria that even a poor chap walking on to check the equipment is startled to receive a welcome like Beatlemania.
From their vertical hairstyles to their bank balances (a reported £14m each), everything about 1D has become so much larger than life that it's a surprise that the show itself is a relatively small-scale production. When Take That's Progress Live tour visited here three years ago, they had everything from roller-skating bees to a 60-foot moving robot. 1D pack fireworks and shower everyone – including the Guardian in row 31 – in ticker tape, but there are few other visual tricks. Perhaps the idea is that the fans would rather yell their amour at a video image of Styles than at a flying rubber bat.
Visual shortcomings certainly don't bother the thousands of screaming tweenies (and their mums) yelling along with Midnight Memories. If 1D are going to pot, it isn't affecting their creativity. As yet, there are no 20-minute sitar odysseys about tangerine turtles, just stupidly straightforward songs that are unabashed about being the 1,234,786th to contain lines like "I can't fight this feeling" and say things such as What Makes You Beautiful, which fiendish pop laboratory songwriters know that girls of a vulnerable age really need to hear. But 1D are rockier than most boy bands: Niall Horan actually plays a guitar (which might even be plugged in).
The two apparent tokers – Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik – say nothing except to thank the fans for their support, before Horan suggests that Sunderland are the loudest crowd they've played to. By the time the town's massed voices sing Best Song Ever, Diana and the rest, the smoky cloud that has hung over the stadium all evening seems to have mysteriously faded.
At Etihad Stadium, Manchester (May 30-31, June 1), then touring. Details at onedirection.com
