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You could hear the whole Albert Hall holding its breath, caught between embarrassment and curiosity. It was a burst of the kind of waily-woo angel choir that turns up at the end of John Ford movies. And tonight he was fine, even without the E Street band, alone with guitar and harmonica, singing bleak solo threnodies about life among the wetbacks and the sad cops on the Mexican border.But as he was singing the last number, a gorgeous Promised-land dream called “Across the Border”, he suddenly threw his head back and began to keen. It’s hard to explain to certain girls, or to delinquents born after 1970, quite what a hold Bruce exerts on the would-be outlaws of Streatham and Stoke Newington, without entering problematic realms of masculinity. This was, after all, the Boss, the Loose Windscreen, the gruff New Jersey poet of backstreet love, badlands cred, boardwalk romance, blacktop voyaging, of darkness on the edge of town and doomed loners dreaming of Vietnam. Walkie-talkies? Ghetto-blasters? Laser swords? And anybody even thinking of erecting a stud partition in the Royal box, or putting up some bookshelves with the aid of a Black & Decker drill with nail-gun accessories, would be in real trouble.But we did as we were told.

Gosh, I thought, he’s 15 minutes late; these people are sticklers for punctuality. But it turned out the boos were in fact his name – “Bruuuuuuuce” – intoned in a Kensington mantra.Then a serious cove from the management came on to insist that certain rules be observed during the concert: no photos, no tape machines, no mobile phones, no digital watches (quoi? We looked at each other Has anyone owned a digital watch since 1982?) We speculated about what else might be debarred. At the beginning and the end of the concert, an unearthly noise suffused the auditorium When the lights darkened, a weird booing could be heard. I shall read her novel, Spinsters, without delay.At the Albert Hall, where I went to worship at the shrine of Bruce Springsteen, my generation’s male hero sans pareil, something odd happened, twice. I’ve tracked down a copy of the latter and it’s a hoot, funny, stroppy and frantically alternative. It was ghastly but strangely uplifting, like being mugged by the Salvation Army.The shortlist is interesting, however, and it introduces British readers to a genuine oddball in the shape of Pagan Kennedy, a Boston thirtysomething who, among other things, runs a cable TV show called Pagan’s World and for six years published a journal, Pagan Kennedy’s Living: the Magazine for Maturing Hipsters.

But that’s what you get with a prize whose criteria apparently include “relevance to people’s everyday and imaginative lives”, something that has not been bothering, say, Pat Barker for years.Male points of view about this prize, however, are not terribly welcome. I went on Woman’s Hour to talk about the current fuss, and was well and truly sandbagged by Kate Mosse, chair of the judges and the programme’s presenter, Jenni Murray. Any time the discussion seemed in danger of straying towards the unsayable – which is, bluntly, that if more women wrote good novels, they’d win more prizes and wouldn’t need an award specially contrived for themselves, as if they were Thracians or Albigensians or some other “under-represented” minority – my interlocutors leapt in and demanded to know which of the shortlisted books I’d read. It begins “F**k you in, tuck you in, suck you in …” and speedily degenerates. A little later, when the vainglorious Tricky could be heard intoning his intention of pleasuring his beloved with such determination – and indeed velocity – that it will make her nose bleed, the show’s producer could stand no more.

This Sunday you can hear his Bromley tones on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, as he talks through his career to an indulgent Sue Lawley. And his choice of records? Oh, you know, Oasis (not a terribly Roy Plomley sort of waxing) and the Massive Attack choric ensemble (ditto) and that other Bristolian act called Tricky, in which a depressed black rapper mumbles at his shoes about the shortcomings of his social life.
They played through the eight records, and everything was fine until the Tricky number, “Abba on Fat Tracks”. That Hanif Kureishi, he’s a one. The enfant terrible author (Buddha of Suburbia), screenwriter (My Beautiful Launderette, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid), director (London Kills Me), rock enthusiast (co-editor, The Faber Book of Pop) and freelance wind-up merchant (he told Melvyn Bragg he thought the bloody anti-poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square were “terrific”) seems determined to re-establish his desperado credentials. The three independent child care experts who carried out the investigation want the report to be published and a full independent inquiry, as do child care agencies, Labour MPs in Wales, and victims of abuse.Mr Hague may delay an announcement until all legal advice has been considered..

The Welsh Office is taking legal advice over the identification of individuals in case the Clwyd child abuse inquiry report is published, it was disclosed yesterday. William Hague, Secretary of State for Wales, is expected to make an announcement on the affair today after briefings from his senior advisers.
He has faced a barrage of demands for the report of the inquiry into abuse at homes in Clwyd to be published, and for a judicial inquiry to be held into the abuse, subject of Britain’s biggest police investigation into child abuse.One of the areas where the Welsh Office is taking advice is believed to be over the sections of the report which contain names and other specific details which could identify individuals.Several people are criticised in the report, as is the Welsh Office social services inspectorate. Labour is considering setting a target of stabilising traffic levels by 2010 and reducing them to 1990 levels by 2020.More motorways would have Continental-style picnic areas and truck stops where drivers could rest to cut accidents.. A tax on free fuel for company cars to persuade more commuters to use public transport has been proposed in a draft Labour transport document, it emerged last night. The tax plans are part of a Labour Party strategy aimed at reducing car use in towns by 30 per cent over the next ten years to ease congestion, improve the environment and cut pollution.
Labour is considering plans to tax the value of free fuel and impose a special business charge on car parking spaces in commercial premises in towns. The revenue could go towards public transport spending.Some Labour sources believe there is growing public acceptance of the need to curb the use of cars in towns and cities.