On Planet Swift, the queue for overpriced merch stretches as far as the eye can see. But I still don my pink cowboy hat and pledge allegiance to the Great One, shared an 80-year-old die-hard Taylor Swift fan.

I don’t know this song — my daughter whispers that it’s called ‘Fortnight’— but I definitely recognise the scenery. Where have I seen this before? Ah yes. It comes flooding back: July 2012 and the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Danny Boyle’s epic show involved a giant white bed on wheels during a homage to the NHS.

Except Taylor Swift’s bed is even bigger. But then everything about this show — called The Eras Tour — is on an Olympic scale. Indeed, Forbes magazine reports that American tour operators are currently selling five trans-Atlantic packages to see Taylor Swift for each package sold for next month’s Paris Olympics. Right now, Wembley is counting down to this weekend’s Swiftquake as Miss Swift takes over the national stadium for the first of eight sell-out nights. It means that she is on track to fill Wembley more times in 2024 than the England team (and her show is twice the duration of a football match).

So, ahead of her arrival in London, I went to see her in Edinburgh a few days ago in order to see what the fuss is all about. She is a phenomenon who, like an Olympiad or the Euros or, for that matter, the Pope, does not merely pack a stadium. She has the capacity to colonise an entire host city for the duration of her stay.

There will be lots of locals at each concert, of course, but also many people who have flown in from all over the world. During my night on the Planet Swift, I meet people from Japan, Germany and China. I am not even the oldest person there. I meet an eminent retired High Court judge who, as a barrister, famously acted for the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Sir Nicholas Mostyn, 66, is here as a bone fide, fully paid-up ‘Swiftie’. The mood is entirely infectious.

It is hard to recall a mass event as suffused with a wholesome, uncomplicated sense of joy as this one. At one point, there is a collective whoop which turns into an extended scream across the majority of this 73,000-strong overwhelmingly female, predominantly under-25 crowd. And it just goes on and on, for reasons I cannot fathom. I am not sure Taylor Swift can either. She is sitting at a grass-covered grand piano in between songs. She has not even said anything when the crowd explodes into this rapturous expression of adoration.

The singer puts on her ‘Who? Me?’ face, a look of modest, bashful, Betty Boopish surprise which she has worn for much of the evening.

The thing is that we believe it is real. This may be the slickest and most-hyped music tour in pop history, with ticket revenue alone estimated at more than £1 billion (that does not include sales of £70 official hoodies, £11 pizzas, broadcasting rights worth gazillions and all the album sales). Yet, to the global Swiftie diaspora — and even to a cynical old hack like me — she feels authentic, heroic, inspirational.

She sings of all the familiar vulnerabilities and hopes of teenage girls and young women from the personal experience of one who has been through it all (she is now 34) and is still searching. To all of them, her appeal can be summed up in the words of Margaret Thatcher: ‘one of us’ (albeit one with private jets, and a ventilated backpack for carrying her pet cat). Even her reported list of special requirements (known in the trade as a ‘rider’) pales before the demands of many a lesser diva: macaroni and cheese, liquorice Twizzlers and a Starbucks iced Americano every morning at 11am. That’s almost as good as Usain Bolt’s admission that he won Olympic gold on a diet of Chicken McNuggets.

As in his case, though, there must be a very serious fitness regime inside the Swift camp. It is a huge stage and she seldom walks around it. She canters. Some artists surround themselves with dancers to convey an exaggerated sense of energy. Taylor Swift does the dancing too. Yet, in more than three hours of show, she is never out of breath when she sings and is off-stage for no more than two minutes of costume-changing in total.

I spotted just one human frailty. As she sat down to play ‘Crazier’ at a little after 10pm, she picked up a tissue and blew her nose. My immediate thought was to imagine the cost of the policy to insure Taylor Swift against a sore throat. But her fans were having a fit of the vapours for another reason. It turned out that she had never played ‘Crazier’ before. Not once.

For despite the rigorously-rehearsed routines, every concert includes two or three ‘surprise’ songs. News of each night’s selection is global news within minutes.

The only discernible glitches since her arrival in Britain have been the weather and the loo arrangements. In choosing to accommodate record-breaking, mainly female audiences in elderly football and rugby stadia designed chiefly for men, there is what the management might euphemistically call an imbalance of facilities. During my night at Murrayfield, for example, I found a 20-minute queue for the gents without a single gent in the queue. An extensive Portaloo complex in the car park went some way to solving the problem.

And you do wonder whether the designers of Taylor Swift’s 16 costumes (reported price: £250,000) had given much thought to British weather when this 152-gig tour kicked off in Arizona in March 2023. For much of the show, she is in not much more than sparkly, spangly swimwear. On her first night in Edinburgh, her guitar-playing hand seized up with cold. The elements were no big deal for the famously all-weather Geordie girls who had made the short trip from Newcastle but it might have come as a shock for a girl from Nashville. During her opening concert in Liverpool last week, she gave the city a double-edged compliment as she proclaimed ‘definitely the windiest date of the Eras Tour’

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Edinburgh, you made me feel so — excellent,’ she tells them.

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The number 13 has become a fan favourite as Taylor Swift was born on December 13, 1989

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Concertgoers spend hours making friendship bracelets to trade with other likeminded Swifties

Every now and then, someone in the crowd faints and a cluster of hundreds of hands shoot up and make rapid pointing gestures. Taylor Swift joins in too. Guitar in hand, she is midway through All Too Well when she sees a lots of pointing going on down to her right. ‘We need some help over there!’ she says, without missing a beat, and carries on with the song. ‘Over there!’ she points a few moments later, guiding the first aid crew to the right spot. Shortly afterwards, an ashen-faced woman with a pink hairband is escorted off the pitch, rather crossly, for a breather. A commendable feature of these shows is the open bars at the back of the standing area encouraging all-comers to grab free cups of water. Apparently, a fan died of dehydration at a Swift gathering in Brazil last year. No wonder she is alert to any incidents in the crowd.

Among the most impressive moments comes near the end when she dives into the stage and a Taylor Swift avatar then appears to swim its full length. There are no cries of ‘Encore!’ because everyone knows that the show will end with ‘Karma’ and some hefty fireworks. No one can say that the star has underperformed. She is a phenomenon and so is her show.

Afterwards, I chat to the former judge, Sir Nicholas Mostyn. Once a diehard opera buff, he explains that he is now both a Swiftie and a ‘Parkie’ – as many of those diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease refer to themselves. As well as launching a new charity, King’s Parkinson’s, he also co-presents the award-winning podcast, Movers and Shakers, with fellow ‘Parkies’ including Jeremy Paxman. After tonight’s concert, he has a plan. ‘I’m going to propose that Shake It Off is adopted as the official anthem for the 150,000 Parkies in the UK,’ he says. ‘Exercise is vital with this disease and it’s a lot easier doing exercise to Taylor Swift than Wagner.’

On the train home, the next day, I see another small reminder of what makes Taylor Swift unique. Two small girls, unaccompanied, are working their way down the train handing out friendship bracelets. They give me one which says Folklore.

We spend our lives lecturing children never to accept gifts from strangers. Yet, here we are on Planet Swift, where the children hand out gifts to strangers — and it feels just as it should be.