AS THE VELVET curtain opened at The O2 last night it was as if an Amazonian queen had been sent from the Gods to grace her sea of followers that had packed the venue to the rafters.

All the hype that surrounds TINA TURNER's live shows was duly deserved as the legend burst into song with faultless vocals that hit you like a juggernaut.

The singer, who hits 70 in November, put on a show so full of energy and athleticism that a woman forty years her junior might have struggled to keep up.

And most women of any age would kill for a body like that too.

Amazing costumes ... Tina Turner at The O2

With her signature moves performed in killer heels, she danced, spun and gyrated in sync with her four sexy female dancers.

She powered her way through hits such as Proud Mary, What’s Love Got To Do With It and Simply The Best, in a show she described as a "recap of my work so far".

The production was that of a Hollywood blockbuster-meets-Las Vegas revue, with costumes to match.

Her wardrobe ranged from the shortest of sequined mini-dresses to an impressive Mad Max-esque Warrior Queen ensemble.

We Don’t Need Another Hero and Golden Eye were the biggest productions and it was like being transported onto the original set, especially the Mad Max number that was simply sensational.

The two-and-a-half hour show incorporated a talented live band, feisty dancers, martial arts experts and belting backing singers.

Tina even took the time to stand back and let them shine individually and receive the deserved adulation.

The stunts, pyrotechnics and choreography were nothing short of spell-binding.

Her comic timing had the crowd laughing in all the right places too.

The culmination of Tina soaring over the crowd on a platform that she danced upon had fans literally bowing at her feet.

If there’s one artist you must see in your lifetime, it has to be Miss Tina Turner.

Quite simply, the Queen of Rock n Roll.

Simply the best ... Tina Turner

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When Tina Turner tells an audience: “I want you to have a good time tonight", she means what she says. The 69-year-old singer has thrown the works at her new show: fireworks, flame throwers, acrobats, bikini-clad dancers and as many sequins as she can fit on dresses designed to show off every last millimetre of the most famous legs in showbiz. Unlike so many artists who attempt to be ’cool’ in arena sized shows and end up coming off simply cold (take note, Madonna), Turner knows that to fill the big venues you need to generate heat and excitement with big-hearted spectacle and big-lunged material.

It helps if you have an audience that arrive enthusiastic: all credit to Turner’s legion of fans for showing up pumped up. Most of the crowd at ground floor level were up and dancing (several in Turner-tribute wigs) before the plush red velvet curtains even parted. Turner’s had a curious, two part career. Act one saw her as the funky sixties strutter with then-husband Ike, mighty voice crashing through Phil Spector’s wall of sound like a wrecking ball on the hopelessly devoted River Deep, Mountain High.

Act Two saw her reinvented in the 1980s, solo and denim clad, backed by synths and saxophones and asking what love had to do with it.

The new show mixes up hits from both eras. It opens with Turner on a podium way above the stage in uber-eighties Amazonion gold. A broad slash of crimson lipstick widening beneath the trademark big hair. The eighties was all about volume, and Turner proves she has both kinds as she roars into Steamy Windows. Dancers in flesh-tone bikinis jerk to the beat as Turner’s podium descend stagewards.

Unlike those female pop stars whose dancers seem to live in fear of upstaging their employer, Turner seems to love pulling the sexy moves with young women decades younger than she is. That distinctive hip-jolting style that she says Mick Jagger stole from her is still packed with attitude as she swaggers into River Deep and What’s Love Got to Do With It. Then she camply, but hilariously, reappears as a sci-fi warrior queen for a full-throttle: “We Don’t Need Another Hero".

She takes it down for the moving, world weary sleaze of Private Dancer. A (relatively) stripped down blues section features a rather flat cover of Help! and a superbly sultry Undercover Agent for the Blues. Then it’s full blast again for Simply The Best, Bond-anthem Golden Eye and a rollicking Proud Mary. To deafening applause, Turner bows so low her fingernails scrape the stage beneath her stratospheric stilettos. Forget the dancing - if I can even bow like that at 69, I’ll be a happy woman.

Rating ***

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1. Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock, and brought up in the tiny Southern town of Nutbush, Tennessee, which she celebrated in her self-penned 1973 funk anthem, Nutbush City Limits.

2. When she was in High School, her sister Allene took Tina to Club Imperial in St Louis, where she met the R&B bandleader Ike Turner. When, in 1960, the singer due to record Ike's latest single, A Fool For Love, didn't show up at the studio, Tina gladly substituted for her. Her debut scored a number two hit in the R&B charts, and went top 30 in the pop chart

3. Ike created her raunchy on-stage persona, with golden wigs, flailing legs and breathtaking mini-skirts. Ike figured that any wife of his had to be seen to be the baddest woman in town, but often would fly into a jealous rage as a result.

4. One Lothario smitten by Tina was Mick Jagger, who hired Ike and Tina on the Rolling Stones' ill-fated US tour of 1969. Tina later claimed that Jagger had stolen many of her moves.

5. Another admirer was the producer Phil Spector, with whose help Ike and Tina sought to break out of the black R&B market. During sessions for River Deep, Mountain High, Spector reputedly pushed Tina to the limit in a baking hot studio, to the point where she performed without a shirt.

6. Ike and Turner's biggest hit was Proud Mary, a cover version of a song by Creedence Clearwater Revival, which reached number four in America and won a Grammy.

7. Ike lost control of his cocaine habit, spiralling into violent rages, chillingly documented in Tina's autobiography. In 1974, contrastingly, Tina became a Nichiren Shoshu Buddhist, after being converted by a friend. Much later, while on tour in the Eighties, she would chant for three hours a day.

8. Her first two solo albums, including 1975's Acid Queen, which aimed to capitalise on her appearance in the Who's Tommy movie, both flopped disastrously.

9. In 1976 she fled from Ike after a violent row before a show in Dallas. She left, carrying 36 cents and a gas-station credit card. They divorced in 1978, with Tina accepting responsibility for debts incurred by cancelled gigs and unpaid taxes.

10. Two further solo albums, one filled with rock covers, the other a disco affair, also flopped. She toured as a lounge act in America, and, by 1981, no record label would touch her. Her career only perked up after a trip to Europe to work with Sheffield's British Electric Foundation, an offshoot of the Human League.

11. Her big breakthrough came with a sweeping rendition of Al Green's Let's Stay Together. With 1984's What's Love Got to Do With It?, Tina became the oldest female artist to have US number one hit. However, she reputedly found much of the accompanying Private Dancer album too wishy-washy: she'd wanted to cut a hard-rock record in the style of AC/DC.

12. With Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, she launched a movie career. Of her startling debut role as Aunty Entity, Tina said: "She was not as fierce as I wanted her to be… I don't want you falling asleep in my movies."

13. After appearing at Live Aid with Mick Jagger in 1985, Tina was joined on stage during a televised show by David Bowie. Bowie had always admired her from afar, but rarely met her, until they sang Tonight together that night (see YouTube). According to legend, when he whispers in her ear, he's making an unequivocal proposal. She laughs, and they spend the rest of the song in a cosy clinch.

14. After leaving Ike, Tina didn't get into another serious relationship until 1985, when she met a German record executive 17 years her junior named Erwin Bach, while at Heathrow Airport. They started dating, and soon moved in together in Cologne.

15. Towards the end of 1988's Break Every Rule tour, which was billed as her farewell, Tina broke the world record for the largest paying audience at a solo concert – 184,000 people, at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro.

16. She's still listed in the Guinness Book of Records for selling more concert tickets than any solo performer in history. She has sold around 200 million records.

17. In 1994, Tina and Erwin took her now considerable fortune and moved to Switzerland. They also have a villa on the Côte d'Azur.

18. The Tennessee State Route 19 between Brownsville and Nutbush was named Tina Turner Highway in 2001.

19. On her election by the Kennedy Centre Honours in 2005, President George W Bush, at the White House reception afterwards, noted that her legs are "the most famous in showbusiness". Others paying tribute included Al Green, Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé Knowles.

20. Performing with Beyoncé at 2008's Grammys, Tina made her first major appearance since 2000. She then announced that her Tina! 50th Anniversary Tour would begin in October. It reaches the UK this week.

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