Our gang of four - my wife, brother-in-law, sister-in-law and I - are enjoying a beer on the Place du Général-de-Gaulle, the beautiful medieval main square in Lille. Noticing our tour T-shirts, the two middle-aged Frenchmen on the neighbouring table start up a conversation about our mutual love: Bruce Springsteen.
The Boss, as he is widely known, will play the following night at the Decathlon Arena on the outskirts of the northern French city. We and our new friends may speak different languages and come from different countries, but at this moment, we have so much in common.
For the next hour, we talk animatedly about our undying devotion to the American musician. We are connected by the international language of The Boss. Passion for Bruce crosses all borders. It is the sort of heartwarming, shared experience that I have often enjoyed over the past half a century.
Tonight, a major new television documentary, When Bruce Springsteen Came to Britain, conveys the fanatical devotion that so many of us - celebrities and civilians alike - continue to show. Featuring an interview with the legend himself, it's being shown to mark the 50th anniversary of his first UK gig at the Hammersmith Odeon, a concert that has long since passed into legend.
My own incurable addiction began as a 17-year-old when I first saw him live at on The River Tour in 1981. From the opening chords of the first song, Born to Run, I was in. The track's initial, euphoric hook electrified me. He had me at, "Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run." It was love at first riff.
Fast-forward 44 years and I am standing in the midst of 60,000 other "stans" - the slang term for a devoted fan - in Lille, still singing my heart out to Born to Run. Age has not withered my obsession with the Boss. Every time I see him, I experience the same teenage kicks - so hard to beat.
Over the past four and a half decades, my Bruce obsession has taken me to more than 30 of his gigs, in cities as varied as , Dublin, Barcelona, Cork, Madrid and London. Following on from Lille, I am going to see him play in Milan at the end of June. Just imagine how many Cadillacs I could have bought with all the money I've spent on seeing Bruce in concert!
Why, oh, why? I hear you ask. Isn't every gig the same? Well, no. The Boss has a back catalogue of literally hundreds of songs, and at every concert he plays a different set list. Some aficionados see dozens of productions of, say, Hamlet or The Magic Flute. And with the Boss, every single night is different and glorious in its own particular way.
Even at the age of 75, Bruce remains thrillingly current. His brave and heartfelt criticisms of President Trump during this tour - he calls the administration "corrupt, incompetent and treasonous" - have imbued his singing with added urgency, anger and pain. It's obviously got under Trump's skin, as you can see from his peevish responses on Truth Social. Telling him to "keep his mouth shut", he called Bruce "as dumb as a rock", "highly overrated", "a pushy, obnoxious jerk" and "a dried-out prune".
He added that when Bruce returns to the US, "then we'll all see how it goes for him".
The commander-in-chief went on to post a childish video of the singer being knocked over by a golf ball apparently hit by Trump. The courageous Boss will not be cowed, though. His opening song in Lille, No Surrender, is designed as a defiant riposte to Trump's puerile bullying. The other irresistible pull of a Bruce gig is the communal experience. It is hard to top that emotional buzz of joining tens of thousands of other fans in belting out songs to which we know every single word.
If that leaves us uplifted, just think how it makes the songs' composer feel. As Bruce stops singing and conducts the audience through the chorus of such classics as Thunder Road and Badlands like a latter-day revivalist preacher, the gig resembles nothing so much as a religious rite. This veritable communion of souls can make you do deeply un-British things, such as cry in public and hug total strangers. His energy on stage is quite infectious, too. Over a truly inspiring, age-defying three to four hours - doesn't he ever need the loo? - Bruce throws the kitchen sink and many other household objects at his performance.
He frequently knee-slides across the stage like a man half his age. Several years younger than him, I come out of every gig physically drained and asking: "How on earth does he do that every single night?" A natural-born showman with a lively sense of humour, Bruce also appears to be having immense fun on stage with his beloved, long-serving E Street Band. This is yet another contagious aspect of his live act.
Filmmaker Gurinder Chada is a lifelong Bruce fan who directed Blinded by the Light, a delightful movie based on the memoir by Sarfraz Manzoor about how discovering the musician as a lost British-Asian teenager in Luton saved him. Gurinder exclaims that when she saw The Boss at Wembley Stadium last summer, it was, "one of the best nights of my life. You've not lived unless you've seen Bruce live. When you see him and the E Street Band working together, there is some kind of alchemy and magic."
Bruce's fellow artists are equally in awe of his spellbinding performances. Sting describes him as, "a whirling dervish of benevolent male energy. It's quite extraordinary."
Meanwhile, Peter Gabriel says The Boss is "a fearless and generous soul. It's very easy to hold back, and he doesn't. He is a soul-baring performer." For his part, super fan Rob Brydon asserts: "There's something about the way he does it with such passion. It's irresistible."
There is no other artist, dead or alive, who so successfully merges the visceral force of rock 'n' roll with the poignancy of heart-rending ballads and compelling stories of the left-behind. Bruce possesses the rare knack of being able to give voice to the voiceless.
His songs are also suffused with a profound poetry of the streets. The luckless narrator of The River expresses his disillusionment with how his life has turned out, lamenting: "Those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse. Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?" A consummate storyteller, Bruce also articulates ideas that really strike a chord with audiences. He says: "Everybody experiences the same triumphs, heartbreak, struggles. I was very intent on writing about what I felt were the timeless themes that run through everyone's life, no matter when or where you're from."
The singer speaks with particular piquancy to the outsider in all of us. As Sarfraz writes in his book: "Having stumbled in the dark for so long, that September night I was blinded by the light. That night Bruce Springsteen changed my life." In his work, The Boss contemplates the fragility of life as well. On his last tour, he played Last Man Standing, in which he reflects poignantly on being the final remaining member of his first band, The Castiles. During 10th Avenue Freeze Out, he also pays tribute to his late E Street Band mates Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici.
Mark Robinson, the executive producer of When Bruce Springsteen Came to Britain, comments: "An element of vulnerability comes out in his songs. Bruce is so different from other rock musicians. He has an air of self-awareness and humility that makes him stand out. That's not how it's meant to be if you're a rock star, is it?"
The Boss puts his money where his mouth is, too. In 1985 Bruce, who sings so movingly about blue-collar lives, invited women from a striking miners' support group backstage at a gig in Newcastle and gave them a cheque for $20,000. And it seems the musician has an infatuation with Britain that stretches back to his introduction to The Beatles in the early 1960s.
Bruce's bond with us has only strengthened over the past six decades. When he first came to these shores, he recalled: "All I was wondering was what do I have that could conceivably give back to those people who gave me so much. The answer is, everything I've got." Recollecting a gig in Sunderland last year, he said: "It was hellacious weather, a driving rainstorm, wind blowing. But standing in the rain, I realised, 'These are my people here in the UK.'"
The rain won't have bothered the true fans. Many people have got married after meeting at Bruce's gigs. The commitment of the aficionados manifests itself in many different and surprising ways. My sister-in-law, for instance, has built a fantastic shrine to The Boss in her garden shed - including a life-size cutout of her hero.
There is also no age barrier to being a fan of The Boss; they range from eight to 80. As Mark explains: "He is now playing to the kids and the grandkids of the original fans who saw him at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975. He has an amazing power to unite the generations."
Despite being well into his eighth decade, Bruce shows no signs of slowing down. Sting observes, "He's one of the icons of music without a doubt and continues to sustain that into his 70s. That's a legacy." Michael Palin, another huge fan, chips in: "Being Bruce is like an Olympic sport, which is admirable, if medically inadvisable."
For his part, Rob believes that, "What we're seeing now is his rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light. As much as I love his music, I want to know what supplements he's taking. Is he doing Pilates?"
Maybe performing live is quite simply addictive for Bruce. It's certainly not about the money. Mark says: "You think, 'You've done everything. Why would you not just want a quiet life?'
"But music is Bruce's life, and so not to do it anymore would be to take away a large part of his life and his reason for being. He must have such an addiction to performing that he just doesn't want to stop."
Evidently, the adrenaline rush of playing to tens of thousands of fans also helps him to stay young. Stevie Van Zandt, The Boss's childhood friend and bandmate, says, "As long as Bruce wants to do it, I'll be standing next to him. We're 25 in our heads."
Whatever it is that drives The Boss to keep performing, we fans will be delighted to continue showing up at his concerts. Hannah Summers, the organiser of Hungry Heart, a Bruce club night that tours the country, sums up the eternal appeal of his gigs: "I've always seen it as like a therapy session. Something happens in those three to four hours that heals you."
As I have known for nearly half a century, nothing beats The Boss.
* When Bruce Springsteen Came to Britain airs tonight at 9.30pm on BBC2 and iPlayer
