Louis Hoover's Salute to Sinatra - Guildhall, Portsmouth

THE Rat Pack are back - as if they'd ever been away.

With Robbie Williams' Swing When You're Winning selling by the million, Ocean's Eleven packing them in at the cinema and all manner of artists from Harry Connick Jnr to Elton John turning out their own versions of Forties and Fifties classics, life has probably never been better for Louis Hoover.

As chief imitator of the supreme Sinatra voice, Louis' two-and-a-half-hour show recreated some of the old magic and, with the help of his superb swing band, allowed those of us who never saw the real thing a tantalising glimpse of what it might just have been like when Ol' Blue Eyes was at the top of his game.

The hits were plentiful - You Make Me Feel So Young, Come Fly With Me, Strangers In The Night, Mac the Knife among the highlights - and there was even room for songs by the likes of Cole Porter and Duke Ellington. As if to prove he's not just a pretty face, Hoover also slipped in one of his own songs from his album And This Is Me, showing, in his own words, that they do still write them like that.

The knockabout routine in the latter stages with musical director Barry Robinson bordered on the corny - more Butlins than Las Vegas - but was rescued again by Hoover's sheer presence.

This was a salute to Sinatra, for sure, but the audience's warm applause also saluted Louis Hoover - who goes far beyond the standard "tribute" to really be Sinatra for a while, both in voice and spirit. And that is something quite special.