Wow. Expectations were set high for The Shires’ latest tour, but the country duo surpassed all these with a fantastic night of music packed with emotional highs and lows.

Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes hail not from Nashville, Tennessee, but Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, and are the first UK country act to score a number 1 album.

The likeable pair then followed that record breaking debut, Brave (2015), up with My Universe (2016) the fastest selling UK country music album.

Their singles are regularly played on mainstream radio, and I enjoyed what I’d heard of them so far.

But I was not prepared to be quite so blown away by their genuine warmth, humour and talent.

The pair bounded onto stage - Crissie literally shining in a beautiful, sparkly dress - where the scene was set with a typical rocky/ countryside backdrop.

They wasted no time in getting the audience straight up on their feet to sing and clap along to Nashville Grey Skies.

And the feelgood factor was turned up a notch with the second single from their second album, My Universe.

The lyrics ‘You only get one life, And I wanna live it. I wanna live it with you’ seems to sum up The Shires’ philosophy.

Yes, life has hurt and pain - Rhodes lost her father to cancer 20 years ago and wrote the incredibly poignant Daddy’s Little Girl, about this - but there’s much to celebrate too.

The Shires had their crowd up, dancing and singing along on at least five tracks, and because they write them all, they had real stories to share too.

Earle talked about becoming a father, and they touchingly dedicated State Lines to a young couple in the front row celebrating their first wedding anniversary.

There were a few surprises, such as a cover of Islands in the Stream that they dusted off for a Radio 2 Sounds of the 80s album and now love performing.

Song after song went down well with the very mixed audience, which included children, pensioners and a fair few people wearing checked shirts.

A Thousand Hallelujahs, Tonight and Friday Night were the real crowd pleasers though, and hopefully we’ll be hearing a lot more where they came from.