”Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewellery”
John Lennon, Royal Variety Performance, London, November 4, 1963, attended by Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret
Robbie Williams
Let Me Entertain You
Robbie pulls out his big number — hit song, that is — to get the party started in celebratory fashion. “If this doesn’t get me a knighthood,” he said of his part in the Jubilee celebrations, “nothing will.”
Jessie J and will.i.am
I Gotta Feeling
Now that Jessie J is Britain’s biggest pop diva and we have adopted will.i.am as our own since he started being nice to people on The Voice, they had earned the right to set the mood of the night with the Black Eyed Peas’ big going-out tune.
Jessie J
Domino
What a shame the Buckingham Palace concert was for over-12s only. This shiny pop smash has become the unofficial anthem for the country’s eight to twelve-year-old girls.
JLS
Everybody in Love and She Makes Me Wanna
The X Factor runners up-turned-continually successful boy band superstars performed their feelgood No 1 hit from 2009 and their fifth No 1 from last year.
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Gary Barlow and Cheryl Cole
Need You Now
Britain’s alpha pop couple performed the Grammy-winning smash by the cheesy country pop trio Lady Antebellum — practically unknown here, huge in the States.
Cliff Richard
Medley (including Dynamite, The Young Ones, Devil Woman, We Don’t Talk Anymore, Wired for Sound, The Millennium Prayer, Congratulations)
It wouldn’t be a royal party without Cliff, doing the soft-shoe shuffle as he performed a quick run-through of a few evergreen favourites.
Lang Lang with the BBC Concert Orchestra
Hungarian Rhapsody No 6 segueing into Rhapsody in Blue
The spiky-haired Chinese pianist wunderkind performed Liszt, a composer he first heard while watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon, aged 2. It introduced him to the Western classical canon and set him off on his current path.
Alfie Boe
O Sole Mio/It’s Now or Never
This stirring Neapolitan ode to a sunny day proved to be spot on, and Boe’s impassioned performance helped us forget the previous day’s sodden flotilla.
Jools Holland and Ruby Turner
You Are So Beautiful
Big-voiced diva Turner joined Holland and his R&B Orchestra for Billy Preston’s emotive soul ballad.
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Grace Jones
Slave to the Rhythm
Pure electric disco magic as Jones ramped up the glamour with her biggest chart success, still sounding incendiary 27 years later.
Ed Sheeran
The A Team
A year ago nobody had heard of this unassuming, guitar-toting 20-year-old from Suffolk; now he’s as famous as his fictional alter ego, Ron Weasley. It was brave of Sheeran to get up there alongside the big guns of pop.
Annie Lennox
There Must Be an Angel
Lennox has been a dignified presence in pop music for more than 30 years, and she brought back the joie de vivre of this Eurythmics single from 1985 that featured Stevie Wonder on harmonica.
Renée Fleming
Un Bel Di
The American soprano performed the most famous aria from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, in which the Japanese wife of an American naval officer imagines her excitement at his return.
Tom Jones
Mama Told Me and Delilah
Currently undergoing a revival thanks partly to his success as a judge on The Voice, the Welsh belter performed his most famous song, Delilah, which, the Queen will be interested to know, has been the official anthem for Stoke City FC since the Seventies.
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Robbie Williams
Mack the Knife
Robbie returned, slipping into crooner persona to do a suave version of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s song from The Threepenny Opera.
Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber
Sing!
The man charged with the responsibility of booking the line-up returned with the official Jubilee song, a celebration of the Commonwealth, backed by members of the Military Wives Choir, and with Lloyd Webber on piano. The single version features a guest spot from no less a talent than Prince Harry, on tambourine.
Shirley Bassey
Diamonds are Forever
The Camp Moment of the Night award went to Bassey, doing Wales proud with her overwrought but fabulous version of the Bond film’s theme tune.
Kylie Minogue
Medley including Spinning Around and Can’t Get You Out Of My Head
With house band, orchestra, eight dancers and modern dance troupe Flawless. Trust Kylie to keep things poptastic: even the Queen (possibly, it was hard to tell) was singing along to the irresistibly catchy hook to Kylie’s most famous song.
Alfie Boe and Renée Fleming
Somewhere
It was a pop-classical crossover moment, as the English tenor and the American soprano joined forces to perform the heartbreaking duet from West Side Story.
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Elton John
I’m Still Standing, Your Song and Crocodile Rock
He was only just still standing; a chest infection meant that Britain’s second favourite queen almost didn’t make it.
BBC Concert Orchestra
Beautiful Day
Presumably U2 were too busy to perform their hit from 2000, but the BBC stepped in to do an admirable job on this song about losing something or someone and still being thankful for what you’ve got.
Stevie Wonder
Sir Duke, Isn’t She Lovely?, Happy Birthday
To have one of the greatest American musicians of all time join the mostly British cast of stars as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations was an honour.
Madness
Our House, It Must be Love
Just in case anyone was in doubt about who lives at Buckingham Palace, the Nutty Boys play Our House — from the roof. England’s vaudeville spirit was never better captured.
Paul McCartney
Magical Mystery Tour, All My Loving, Let it Be, Live and Let Die, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
The Wings classic was grand enough to match the fireworks that lit up the sky over London, while a singalong of the tune that is a gift to buskers the world over brought the spirit of togetherness that makes an event like this so special and memorable.
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35 trumpeters
The National Anthem, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory
The concert ended, naturally, with the crowd standing for the anthem of the Commonwealth Realms, bringing to an end a garden party that celebrated Britain and the Royal Family in style.