James Morrison at Hampton Court Palace

There are few more picturesque settings to watch live music than Hampton Court Palace on a cool summer’s evening and the 3,000 people who flocked to watch James Morrison warble on Wednesday certainly agreed.

The gig was part of the Hampton Court Festival, 10 days of live music and performances which concludes on Sunday with John Barrowman taking to the stage

The festival certainly got Morrison rocking and the housewives’ darling wowed the crowd with a strong performance, belting out old classics and new material.

He is an example of a sure-fire formula for getting very rich very quickly. It is easy to forget that the Rugby born singer has only been around for six years and released his third album, The Awakening, last year.

Seemingly all it takes is a ridiculously strong voice, a few guitar chords, and excellent backing musicians and singers.

Morrison burst onto the scene with the aptly-named Undiscovered in 2006, which produced the top 10 hits You Give Me Something and Wonderful World, which proved his successful encore as it so often does.

While he has been and maybe always will be the housewives favourite, there was a much younger crowd than you might have expected and Morrison had them in the palm of his hand by using the unique surroundings to encourage maximum audience participation.

The high point was the standing ovation he received during Don’t Let Me Go, when Morrison himself barely needed to sing and a large number of the audience raced around the side of the temporary seating to get a better view.

He opened with Beautiful Life to loud wooing from the audience once they had filtered back to the arena from the palace grounds and another highlight was his rendition of Broken Strings (the collaborative UK number two single he performed with Nelly Furtado).

The artist showed a large dose of wit between songs, never more so than when me compared his dancing skills to the late Michael Jackson before newest hit Slave to the Music. But in truth he could have been saying anything by now. Even the jokes about the Hampton Court Palace Festival crowds went down well.

The easy criticism of Morrison would be that he lacks variety. This may be the case. But he produces catchy choruses which pull at the heart strings and this is more than enough to keep his hordes of fans happy for now. Whether his career has longevity without a greater range of material is a question for another day.

There were a number of ‘I love you James’ screams from the crowd, not caring that he is married and says his wife Gill is the only person he has ever loved apart from his family.

He may often be mistaken for Coldplay maestro Chris Martin (and Mr Gwyneth Paltrow) but this performance showed he was a star in his own right.

Morrison is still awaiting a UK number one single, but I would challenge anyone brave enough to question his music to the Hampton Court Palace Crowd on Wednesday. How can you dispute anything which provokes such a reaction which will have left countless people with sore throats the following morning?

There are still tickets available for the finale. Visit www.hamptoncourtpalacefestival.com for more details.