Under-the-weather R&B star Ne-Yo was reduced to tears in Manchester last night after he was forced to scrap his set due to illness just an hour into the show.

“I’ve never not completed a show—I’ve never done this before,” he told the crowd, wiping away tears. “I want to say…I want to thank y’all for bearing with me as long as y’all did, I appreciate that.”

BBC Manchester presenter Karen Gabay was at the concert and said Ne-Yo looked like he had a “really bad fever”.

“He was doing a Michael Jackson tribute and you could see that he was actually struggling to finish every musical phrase. He kept asking the audience to bear with him. Then he actually was crying. I thought it was because he had done a couple of Michael Jackson tributes and he was getting a little bit overcome,” she explained.

“Then he did a slow song, he was really struggling to move, he was absolutely pouring with sweat, and he went over to a table. He was actually hanging on for dear life and he looked as if he was about to drop then, he looked so ill. My friend also noticed that his songs had been shortened.”