All around me, men and women (at least) double my age are shaking their hips with all the ferocity of a teenage hula-hooper. The stand I’ve chosen to settle in is physically shaking, bouncing up and down as what feels like miles below, on a stage the size of a small town (and featuring as many lights as Las Vegas’ Strip), The Rolling Stones turn back the hands of rock ‘n’ roll time with a faultless run-through of ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. Mick’s wiggling his limbs like they're snakes charmed by a Middle-Eastern rhythm while Ronnie’s wandering about the huge stage like a freshly released from captivity deer, eyes bright but vacant. Keith, meanwhile, plucks at his strings with a mask of remarkable concentration across his face – a sea of arms before him hold up inflatable palm trees in ‘honour’ of his recent coconut-related injury (clicky). It’s time to party, ladies and gents. To party like it’s 1968…

This is my first-ever stadium show: that it occurs on the same night that Radiohead are serenading an Edinburgh audience that I’d have almost killed to be in only slightly sours the experience. I wonder if the forty-somethings (that’s being generous) to my right, hooting along with Mick’s raspy spits and ballsy shouts, even know what Radiohead is – chances are many of them would look for it beside the iPods in Currys. I’m distracted by this thought for all of a few seconds: the pondering is shattered when a few fireworks shoot from the stage. All attentions – God only knows how many thousands of them – are immediately focused on the aging rockers still acting like they’re twenty years old. That so many of the songs they deliver over a two-and-something-hour-long set get a cynical sort like me – oh come on, they’re only in it these days for the money – smiling is a testament to their universal appeal and amazing longevity.

The A Bigger Bang songs pass me by – I’ve not given their recently-released follow-up to 1997’s Bridges To Babylon any time whatsoever, primarily because I don’t have it – but when the four-piece, ably assisted by talented backing musicians, break into The Hits, the show becomes a fantastic spectacle. Flames shoot from the stage’s twin towers – they look like melted hotel buildings from where I’m sat – as Mick violently flicks his wrists as if a bug’s mounted the back of his hand and belts out a series of guaranteed crowd-pleasers. We get ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’. We get ‘It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll’. We get ‘Brown Sugar’. We get ‘Bitch’. Our hearts stop for the entire duration of ‘Paint It, Black’, all the blood in our bodies staying put in our eyes and ears to allow the song to filter into our systems that little bit better. The headrush is quite incomparable.

One numb behind (and a few impressive set-pieces) later, the closer to bring any set, anywhere in the world, to a climax is delivered: ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. Again, fireworks crackle and pop and bang into life – appropriately, really, seeing as this is the A Bigger Bang tour – and everyone tumbles out into the Twickenham night beaming broadly. The queue for London-bound trains soon turns a few frowns back around to their natural positions, but most attendees are gleefully clutching their merchandise-stuffed Stones-branded plastic bags as if they contain an elixir of eternal life. (Tough luck: Keith's got the recipe under wraps.)

Yes, the show’s a money-making exercise first and an integrity-fuelled exercise in catharsis never, but that’s the point. This is by-the-book nostalgia, served hot (you can feel the flames on your face, even from so far away) and greedily devoured by fans who travel far and wide for the experience whenever it’s available. No alarms and no surprises, please. It’s not once-in-a-lifetime stuff, but an evening with The Rolling Stones proves to be an enjoyable alternative to Just Another Indie Band playing to eight drunks in some dark hole of a club in Camden.

You just know those hip-swinging not-so-young dudes are gonna feel it in the morning, though.