For several weeks Tim and I have been giving away tickets on our Resonance FM radio show to see the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play a concert of “Symphonic Rock” at the Albert Hall. Last night was the big night, so we wandered down in solidarity with our ticket winners and took our complimentary places in Loggia Box 18, at the back of the hall, alongside a middle-aged couple who had probably paid upwards of 30 quid for the privilege of sitting next to us. We scanned the programme. Songs by Queen, Meatloaf, Bon Jovi, George Michael, Led Zeppelin and many more were to be given the symphonic treatment. Tim looked around the venue. “I tell you what, I do a lot of work with the RPO, I've seen a lot of their shows, and this is biggest audience I've ever seen,” he said, glumly.

7.30 arrived, and the orchestra trudged on stage and kicked into Copeland's “Fanfare For The Common Man”, breaking into the thud, crash and swing of ELP's version at the required moment. You could sense the deadness behind the eyes of all the players – some of the top players in the country – bored to tears at having to play facile tunes to crowds of people who would never even think about coming to see them play Mahler, Bartok, Saint-Saens, Debussy. The playing was lazy, uninterested, lacking in dynamics, and I didn't blame them one bit. The crowd certainly didn't seem to notice, tapping away merrily. I asked Tim what the consensus was among RPO players at having to give this concert. “Well, they f*cking hate it, obviously.”

Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce came on to compere the night, dressed in a white suit and delivering feeble topical humour, causing weak titters to ripple in a sympathetic but embarrassed fashion around the hall. After describing Coldplay as “an inspiration to all students at UCL” (?) he introduced the next few numbers, which continued to display how completely inappropriate the orchestral medium is to play versions of rock and pop classics. A trumpet cannot match the inflexions of a vocal performance. It just can't. “Layla” was a prime example. I'm pleasantly unfamiliar with the Derek and The Dominoes version, but I'd rather listen to it jammed on repeat until the batteries run out than experience orchestral players sight-reading a rough transcription of Clapton's vocal line off a stave. It sounds ridiculous. But not as ridiculous as the bit of We Are The Champions that goes “You brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it, I thank you all”, attempted by the principal flautist. Light relief was brought by a team of backing vocalists standing at the back of the stage, who in Bat Out Of Hell had to do a big choral build up of “ahhh, ahhh, ahhh”, only for the main theme to be taken by a weedy-sounding violin section who had trouble being heard above the drum kit. During all this the lights swept up and down in an attempt to distract us.

It didn't work. Careless Whisper's sax solo was played lumpily by a white haired, balding man in his 50s. The already-dismal Beautiful Day by U2 was an extraordinary mess of the same 4 chords for several minutes, without the added distraction / amusement of Bono's lyrics. The absence of any words and imaginative arrangements rendered most verses completely identical, Let It Be suffering particularly badly. And, most appallingly, when the one chance came to perform something reasonably authentica – an acoustic guitar introduction to “Wonderwall” – they got the chords wrong. Completely wrong. After collapsing in giggles when a trombone player slid amusingly around the verse of the aforementioned Oasis classic, we legged it to a local pub, abandoning the delights of the second half which included, incredibly, a song by Travis. I apologise profusely to those people who entered the competitions to win these tickets in the expectation that it would be fun. It wasn't. I'm sorry.