The words coming from his lips are "no friend of Bush", but he wears a stars and stripes bandanna.Of course, this is not necessarily a contradiction: perhaps Eminem is, like Springsteen circa Born In The USA, mourning the American ideal betrayed But I doubt it. The film 8 Mile is essentially a hymn to the WASP virtues of self-sufficiency, hard work and the anyone-can-do-it dream. What were those Senators getting so worked up about? "You don't want to mess with Shady/ Because Shady will fucking kill you..." Ah, maybe that's what. But given that the US establishment cares little about black-on-black crime, why should it care about trash-on-trash crime? In any case, the circus ringmaster (think The Penguin from Tim Burton's Batman) and the fireworks, let off as cheaply as farts, clue you into the fact that this is nothing but pantomime.Then his sidekicks, the mainly clueless D12, blunder on and almost ruin the show, notably the fat bastard who knocked a Slim Shady over my shirt backstage, and now insists on jiggling his naked man-blubber around for the cameras. I take a direct hit on the left ear; another young man walks past me with a broken nose, his evening ruined before it's begun.The appearance of the man himself calms the aggro and raises the roof: contradictions from the word "yo". (That's "Yo LONDON!" by the way, Eminem's advisors clearly having the same grasp of English geography as those people who decided that Milton Keynes was a reasonable home for Wimbledon FC).

And he keeps disrespecting me in public..."Before Eminem takes the stage, stepping off a giant ferris wheel, the mob entertains itself by hurling bottles back and forth. Whereas Ice clearly wanted to be black, but at the same time have the sellability of clean-cut white boy - to have his vanilla cone and eat it - Eminem is the real deal, take it or leave it. If Eminem had never come to the attention of Dr Dre, you can still picture him and his family on primetime TV. Jerry Springer: "So, Mrs Mathers, you say that your son Marshall has gone wild, constantly boasts about taking illegal drugs, and once beat somebody up for dating his ex-girlfriend?" Debbie Mathers: "Yes (sob). These people are trash, and he talks their language: "so much anger, aimed no particular direction" ("White America").What he has going for him - and what, say, Vanilla Ice did not - is that demonically problematic word, authenticity.

But a glance around the (predominantly white) crowd in the Milton Keynes Bowl shows that Eminem has tapped into a mood, and articulated an experience which goes beyond the Detroit trailer parks. And yet, he is one of those people who, while clearly talented, is insufferably irritating (that shrill, whining voice doesn't help) Like Victor Lewis-Smith Or Richard Stilgoe. I only heard the album whence it came (The Eminem Show) once in one of those insulting hotel-room playbacks, and I was too underwhelmed to fork out for a copy. Personally, I've always had mixed feelings on the blond bard. Those "Eminem: the new Keats?" thinkpieces in the broadsheets a couple of years ago had a point. His rhyming skills are impressive, the twists of syntax, assonance and alliteration, the way he plays with the scan of a line, are sometimes breathtaking. The Eminem intro video makes great capital by reminding us exactly who it is that doesn't get him, blatantly manipulating our instinct to side with the underdog. 'He particularly appeals to troubled kids," says Senator Sam Brownback.