It was, of course, a remarkable coincidence that Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja was to sing the Rule Britannia with which traditionally the Sir John Woods Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall come to an end, on Malta’s own national day.

At the end, as we all know, Joseph carried the day brilliantly. Not only was his singing top-notch on the night, as it usually is, but he also avoided a huge pitfall that consisted of singing a traditional and imperialist song on the day of Malta’s anniversary of its victory in the Great Siege.

His gesture of turning up for the second part dressed up like a hoodie with the Team Britain track suit and then ripping it open to uncover the Maltese Cross on his T-shirt underneath was a brilliant move, as was his launching black caps with the Maltese Cross on them to the audience.

Fortunately, we in Malta could follow this Last Night at the Proms live thanks to the BBC and TVM (although it was not right that the commentary was not heard and that there were no taglines to inform us what music was being played). And those who missed out on Saturday night, could see the TVM repetition on Sunday. It was not just the packed house at the Royal Albert Hall that Joseph wowed but also the enormous crowd gathered in Hyde Park, a lesser crowd in Wales and another one in Belfast and Glasgow.

These crowds appreciated Joseph’s singing and later on sang with him the most beloved of songs, from You Never Walk Alone to Jerusalem.

And so it happened that this worthy son of Malta, on the day that Malta celebrated its national day (well, one of five national days, but that’s another matter), showed an adoring nation that even small Malta can stand up and be counted.

Joseph has become Malta’s version of a mega-figure, Malta’s really global representative, who graces opera houses from New York to Munich and in between as well. And he has done so on his own steam, with no leg-ups at all. He is blessed with a wonderful voice and, as we all saw on Saturday, his voice is a unique instrument which has been trained well. He reconciles those who hear him with operatic and bel canto music – something rather rare in today’s world of rock stars and heavy metal bands. This puts him on a par with the rock star tenors of our times such as Pavarotti.

And he has never renounced to his Maltese background and upbringing. He has never been shy to say he is from Malta. There have been cases where people from Malta have struggled to hide their Maltese background – but Joseph is not one of these.

We, of course, here in Malta, know much more. Every summer we have the Joseph Calleja concert on the Granaries in Floriana and, apart from entertaining the vast crowd with his repertoire of operatic and other arias, Joseph stimulates the choir of Maltese children with the expressed and declared intention, as he put it, that as the families of these children hear their children singing, they too open up to the beauty of classical and semi-classical music which in this day and age risks being submerged.

Many times we, in this tiny country we call our own, tend to think that being small we are also inferior to the big countries around us. Well, on Saturday, Malta’s national day, Joseph Calleja showed us we have nothing to be ashamed of, we are not inferior to anybody, we can hold our heads high. For that, if for that alone, Joseph deserves all our praise and thanks.

Well done, Joseph.