WITH giant, sequin-encrusted shoulder pads jutting out above platinum-blonde tresses, there's no mistaking the flamboyant form of Lady Gaga in town.

Fresh from that mind-boggling performance at the Brit Awards earlier this week, Lady Gaga unveiled her Monster Ball UK tour here in Manchester.

At an MEN Arena packed to the rafters, Gaga was every bit as weird, wacky and downright mad-as-a-box-of-frogs as her name implies.

In the feverish excitement ahead of her arrival on stage a dishwasher overheated in an MEN Arena kitchen, and the fire brigade were called. Lady Gaga was eventually running 45 minutes late.

She's edging ever close to pop-icon status with every avant-garde performance and I'm sure reigning Queen of Pop Madonna must be quaking in her own killer heels.

For, while New Yorker Gaga, real name Stefani Germanotta, owes much to the sassy style of Madonna, she pushes the boundaries to quite simply outlandish levels and somehow gets away with it.

Heck, she's even managed to make once ridiculed haute couture fashion statements into mainstream girly attire.

One look at her devoted fans in the audience pays testament to that - at every turn, there are Gaga-alikes in tiny pants, skyscraper heels and hair-raising blonde barnets. She is quite simply the trend of our time. We are all her “little monsters“, as she often repeats through this show.

And, boy, do those little monsters have a ball.

Lady G may strive to break new ground with her unique brand of performance art, but her music remains at its core pure, simple pop. The strains of her debut smash, Just Dance, have her screaming fans jiggling their flashing bunny ears in the aisles.

On launching this tour, Gaga reckoned it would be a “multimedia artistic experience in the style of the first-ever electropop opera“. Blimey.

But, despite those lofty aims, there's never any real fear of this La Gaga production turning La Traviata.

But entertaining it is at every glittery contorted turn.

Not least at the spectacular finale - when the monster alluded to throughout lurches onto stage as a giant tentacled beast attacking the emerald-basqued Gaga during one of her biggest hits Paparazzi.   It makes sure we all know that this really is a monster of a show before she bows out with hit of the moment, Bad Romance, ringing in our ears.