Half way through the set, singer Brandon Flowers expressed his concern after seeing an elderly man fall into the 60,000-strong crowd while being crowd-surfed to the front.

When the pensioner – later identified as sixty-seven-year-old Doug James from Sale – was pulled from the crowd with a bleeding head, Flowers asked the audience whether he should be crowd-surfing at his age, before jumping down from the stage to greet him himself.

Social media footage shows Flowers warmly embracing Doug, who seemed overjoyed with the situation and completely unfazed by the cut on his head.

Once back on stage, the American singer adopted his own Mancunian accent and recalled: “I said Billy what ya doin’? He told me ‘I’m enjoyin’ me self!’”.

Doug, who was at the gig with his son and daughter-in-law, later told ITV News of his encounter: “There are so many nice and fun people at concerts, I got chatting to them and thought it [crowd-surfing] would be a good idea.”

He explained that he was inspired after seeing a lady in a wheelchair be lifted into the air, noting how he thought it was a ‘lovely idea’.

He said to the people around him: “I’d like to have a go at that and I said to the lad beside me if you crowd surf then I will, he decided not to, but I said lift me up and send me forward.”