"I feel proud... and I feel afraid": My Manchester United idol keeps making the same mistake

Dear reader, I put my apprehensions aside... and there I sat

Eric Cantona was once asked how it felt that decades after retiring from football, Manchester United fans still sing his name at almost every Old Trafford match.

"I feel proud," he said. "I feel great... and I feel a bit afraid."

Why the fear, Eric?

"Because they will stop one day."

But one suspects he's wrong. Today he's utterly adored by Reds too young to have ever seen him kick a ball, thanks to the Manchester United Nostalgia-industrial complex - and they will always sing for him.

If I'm honest, though: I just wish he'd stop singing for us.

Last October I bore witness to Cantona's latest venture (after retiring from football he became an actor and considered a run for the French presidency - and now he's a singer, as you do). As we sat in Stoller Hall on that rainy Manchester Friday night, I felt I was living through one of David Lynch's stranger episodes of Twin Peaks.

We half-expected him to MAYBE sing for a short while, but for it to be more of a one-man show where he talks to the audience, reminisces, philosophises.

WRONG. He sang at us for almost two hours with barely a pause in-between songs.

And let me just emphasise that he cannot sing, and that the songs are c***... but my word can he perform, and work a crowd. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Ultimately we were just so happy be sat in the same room as him. This is a true maverick hero who coloured our childhoods, who gave knackered blokes something to smile about after a s*** day at work and let's not forget: this is the man who was the catalyst for Manchester United knocking Liverpool "off their f****** perch".

He could have leapt from the stage to the third row where we were sat and Kung-Fu kicked me and that night would still be up there with the birth of my son.

So despite being quite rattled by the whole ordeal of the performance, my brother said to me after: "I'd very happily sit there for three hours just watching him peel potatoes" and I felt that summed it all up quite nicely.

Well, Cantona came to town to perform again on Saturday night: this time to the much larger Palace Theatre. His performances on the tour last time round sold out in 12 minutes... tickets for this second run were what could only be described as 'very available'.

Some clearly aren't feeling too brave to dip their toe in the waters of 'Cantona Sings Eric' for a second time... but dear reader, I put my apprehensions aside and there I sat.

Naturally, as he walked out there was nothing but rapture. A sort-of glorious, Saturday-night-out-in-Manchester-p****d-up rapture. But rapture none the less.

I take my seat. The woman next to me instantly says: "Hiya! I talk to everyone I meet, just so you know!". And she did. And I said I'd give her a shout out in the piece, so here it is.

Eric is in more playful mood this time. He's swigging from a Union Jack flask. This sets the stall out for a bawdy evening - within the first three songs a woman storms towards the stage, removes her bra and hurls it at Cantona.

The very-chatty-slash-rowdy-woman next to me says: "Oh my God! I know her!". I'm not surprised by this.

Having already sat through this interval-less ordeal once, I take my leave about an hour in to pop for a wee. The gents room is abuzz with chatter about the great man.

"He is the greatest entertainer," one says. "The king!" another replies, before exchanging insults about Man City and patting a stranger on the back lovingly with an unwashed hand at the urinal.

"Have a good night mate." I'm sure he does. In our own way, we all do.

But the reality inside the theatre is that everyone is talking over the tracks and no one is genuinely interested, heckling in-between at every chance, and the applause at the end of every song feels more like relief than appreciation. It's quite disrespectful, but it's also all part of the deal of what surmounts to be an odd, novelty evening out.

A couple who 20 minutes ago squeezed past us to go to the loo still haven't returned.

They never do. It's hard to blame them.

In fact, when it's time for the encore there are many empty seats. It feels like Cantona has made a mistake in indulging going on tour once more - it would have been best leaving it there as a one-off "I was there" oddity.

Those who remain however are on their feet. They want Eric to feel all the love we have for him, in spite of what he's put us through.

We go to an Irish bar afterwards and drink gin and tonic as we watch a band perform the worst U2 cover of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" that I could ever imagine. There should be laws against this.

And yet it felt like a fitting way to round off the evening, and we order an Uber home.