YOUNG people today, what are they like? Last Friday night, a full house at the Grand Opera House in York was reminded once again of what they are like.

The misanthropes and misery-guts who pour fear and loathing on the young would have been disappointed by this happy gathering. Had they been brave enough to venture among so many young people, their glum faces may even have been surprised by a smile.

The occasion was the Best Of The Bands contest, which saw teenage bands from York schools competing for eight prizes.

Here are a few statistics, subject to mathematical ability. There were 14 bands (definitely correct, even your number-dazed columnist can count that high) and 70 musicians, including 22 guitarists, 14 bassists and the same number of drummers, three saxophone players, two trombonists and one accordion player.

The 14 bands played 13 cover versions, ranging from Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan to Girls Aloud and The Fratellis, and 15 original songs.

Number of screaming girls in the audience (too many for the middle-aged human ear to quantify); number of headaches by the end of the night (a few, but what's a buzzing head among proud parents, grandparents and the rest?).

We were there to support the family guitarist who, at 15, is obsessed with music, and occasionally emerges from his attic lair to talk about guitars, or look up something about guitars on the internet, or download the notation for a song to learn. Then he climbs the stairway to heaven, or his untidy bedroom, to switch on his electric guitar and lift the roof tiles once again.

What a purposeful lad he is - and his enthusiasm was multiplied by all the other guitarists who plugged in at the Opera House last Friday. In the event, our family guitarist's band came away with one award (best individual performer for Aran Macrae, singer with The Frizz), with the other honours going elsewhere.

The one accordionist, listed above, had a hand in securing the top prize for The Silhouette Zoo, which included four days in a recording studio, plus other music-related benefits. Sam Lunn caressed his accordion in and out to lovely effect, helping this frantic folk/rock quartet stand out from the crowd.

Singer and acoustic guitarist Nathaniel Priestley leapt about the stage like a man joyfully possessed, which by the end of the night he certainly was, and quite right too.

Once our resident guitarist had absorbed his slight disappointment at no further prizes, he agreed that The Silhouette Zoo, from York College, had deserved to win.

There were some grumbles backstage as the prizes were announced, as is only natural, but the six judges had a difficult job. It is not easy to grade one band against another, and at least these judges withdrew to make their decisions in private, and were then allowed back to their seats as compere Alan Raw, from BBC Raw Talent, made the announcements.

The one and only time I judged a best of the bands show was in one of the roughest pubs in south-east London, a palace of gloom which stood by the gaping mouth of the Blackwall Tunnel. We had to stand on stage to deliver our verdicts, and the other judges stitched me up by being harsh in private and then softening their criticism in public, leaving me to look a fool in front of a hostile audience of fans with tattoos sketched on all available areas of skin. Anyway, that was then, and a long-ago then too. What's important now is that York should be lucky enough to have such a fantastic contest, which lets young musicians appear on a professional stage in front of a massed audience, as if they were proper bands playing for a living.

Everyone involved in Best Of The Bands deserves high praise, and City Of York Council - whoever happens to be running the show by now - should be applauded for its efforts in cultivating and encouraging young people's music.

Young people today, what are they like? Talented, clever, creative and full of spirit, that's what. Never mind the whey-faced holders of ASBOs or the occasional troublemakers who lurk outside local shops. Listen to these plugged-in kids instead.

They are the real thing.