Nancy Sinatra/ Linder, Royal Festival Hall, London

Nancy with the laughing eyes

There's much which could be made of the fact that Morrissey is so drawn to strong female figures with a hint of gay icon fabulousness about them, and it's a trait which runs through him like letters through seaside rock (from the canonisation of Coronation Street's Pat Phoenix on the sleeve of "Shakespeare's Sister" to the numerous lyrical references to his own mother).

As Linder Sterling, an ageless Lauren Bacall lookalike in spectacular stilettos and a scarlet mermaid-tailed frock, takes the stage of the Royal Festival Hall, it's clear that she fits Morrissey's Meltdown bill one hundred per cent.

Scouse-born Sterling was a notable figure on the Manchester punk scene, designing record sleeves for The Buzzcocks, Magazine and PiL, and forming her own poetic post-punk act Ludus, who vanished without making a significant impact. Except, that is, on the mind of the young Stephen Morrissey, for whom Linder became a muse and inspiration.

Even 20-odd years later, you can see why he so adores her. Nowadays she's a jazz chanteuse with a voice which is wayward and engagingly unschooled, but perfectly suited for avant-cocktail material such as "The Joker" (written by Anthony Newley for the failed Sixties musical The Roar Of The Greasepaint, The Smell Of The Crowd, and recorded by Shirley Bassey), Bacharach's "Wives and Lovers" (slightly re-written from the familiar Tom Jones version, and twisted to fit a female perspective), and Ludus's own 1981 song "Mutilated". Morrissey, perched in his eyrie up in the posh boxes, looks on with pride.

"There's 100 years of female wisdom on this stage tonight," observes Sterling, adding her age to that of the headliner. But when Nancy Sinatra steps into the shadows to ecstatic screams ("You're not supposed to know I'm here yet!"), wearing what appears to be a Flower Power nightgown made from a net curtain, with bouffant blonde hair straight outta '68 and dramatic panda eyes, it seems inconceivable that she's that old.

"Maybe it's me who needs tuning up," she quips, as her guitarist takes an age to adjust his top string. Not a bit of it. It's only when you get close - charging to the front for the inevitable encore of "These Boots Are Made For Walking" - that you notice that she has had a little bit of work done and, OK, maybe she really has just turned 64.

After a haunting acoustic overture of "Bang Bang" (re-popularised by Tarantino's soundtrack to Kill Bill), Nancy apologises for the 38-year wait between her first number one single and this, which is remarkably her first ever live appearance in England (although she did make it to Edinburgh a couple of years ago), and urges us to thank Morrissey for making it happen.

Four decades ago, Nancy Sinatra was the musical equivalent of Patty Hearst: a high society princess willingly kidnapped by the freaks, most notably big bad Lee Hazlewood, the rock'n'roller, disreputable genius and American Gainsbourg, with whom she fell in, and who wrote many of her finest tunes. The shock value must have been incalculable.

This counter-cultural cachet is why tonight's audience mainly consists of twentysomething hipsters and older people in bands (Clem Burke from Blondie, Mick Hucknall from Simply Red, and that's just the row in front of me).

After her recording career tailed off in the Seventies, Nancy was happy to retreat from the spotlight and raise her kids. And so, when she appeared in last year's The Importance Of Being Morrissey documentary, there was a reason why she looked like a middle-aged housewife. That's pretty much what she is.

Her choice of songs, however, has always been sharp to say the least - if you've had her pegged as a Yankee Cilla, you're way wide of the mark - and age hasn't blunted that. Tonight, in addition to cheese like "Sugar Town" (during which she goes walkabout and gives audience members a chance to "shu-shu-shu" along), and a glorious "You Only Live Twice" (which banishes bad memories of Robbie Williams' sample on "Millennium"), we get Kasey Chambers' touching "Brickwalls and Barricades", Hazlewood's "In Our Time" ("Girls were once suffragettes/ Now they're out takin' bets/ Smokin' funny cigarettes!"), and a cover of Morrissey's own "Let Me Kiss You", which will - in an apparent attempt to do for Nancy what The Smiths once did for Sandie Shaw - be Sinatra's comeback single. It's accompanied by a candid-camera slide show of he and she hanging out in Hollywood, and suddenly you realise what Morrissey and Nancy are becoming: the alternative Jacko and Liz.

"Happy Father's Day," she suddenly announces, and sings a song about the life of Frank Sr, written for her by Bono and The Edge, with the caveat, "this song's not for you folks, it's for my dad" and the chorus, "two shots of happy, one shot of sad". By the end, she's genuinely choked up. "Morrissey told me I'm not allowed to cry," she says, sobbing disobediently.

"Now," she says, forcing a brave face, "we're going to discuss my illustrious film career," and she sings in front of projected clips from Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, Speedway and The Wild Angels, depicting a young, carefree, swinging Nancy shimmying around in lingerie at a hippy party, riding pillion with Jack Nicholson, drinking cocktails with Ol' Blue Eyes himself and snogging Elvis. "And by the way," she says, answering the first thought on everyone's mind, "yes he was a good kisser."

As she steps down into the aisles, Sinatra is mobbed, 50 per cent by gay men, 50 per cent by straight girls who look and dress exactly as she did in '66. Before she leaves, she whips out a camera and takes a photo of us all. Nancy knows this is something special, every bit as much as we do.

s.price@independent.co.uk