SATURDAY

The Menschen: a young bunch of hairy indie upstarts see in Day Two having won a Battle Of The Bands competition to be here. 'Snapshot' and 'Your Red Is So Face' are quite good too.

The Thirst are another set of bright young things, these signed to Ronnie Wood's label Wooden Records. There is big hair, there is punk/hip-hop noisiness and there are yelpy, scary vocals. Ones to watch.
Well hooray, it's Carbon/Silicon aka - Clash/B.A.D guitar-slinger Mick Jones and Tony James (the formerly pink-haired one from Sigue Sigue Sputnik). Jones opens a beer, drenches himself and gets down to business. Dignity: it's always about the dignity...

He remains a fine purveyor of stabbing punk guitar and still looks like a sullen teenager despite the receding hairline; plus there are lots of growling rock anthems such as 'War On Culture' and 'What The F**k?', which he dedicates to Dostoevsky - as you do. He then declares he still "has the right to get off his face". Our affection for this softly spoken punk remains unwavering.

Donovan: "I taught The Beatles everything, Bob Dylan too; oh, and Joan Baez was so in love with me, poor dear." These are just some of the frequently voiced thoughts ever-coursing through the ego of our next act, hippie chancer Donovan.

Catchy chug-a-lug anthem 'Mellow Yellow' goes down well with lots of people singing along, reminding us how it plodded its way to novelty tune domination in the first place. Sadly we find this all a bit drippy and embarrassing. He makes silly noises and at one point says, "Give me the jazz clap." Even if we knew what one of those was we'd probably sit it out this time, thank you very much.

It's easy to still be caught up with how marvellous 'Back To Black' is, but out of the studio and in the cold light of day Amy Winehouse is hit and miss, despite the perfect backing band and flailing backing singers. She wriggles, squawks and noodles, occasionally off-key, in her fake New Orleans accent. Worse, you can see uncertainty in her eyes - and in the crowd's eyes too.

What's more, in our opinion, you have to be pretty special to cover the Specials/Toots And The Maytals: she has a go at 'Hey Little Rich Girl' and 'Monkey Man'; the latter performed with the usual fake Jamaican accent which is best left undiscussed.

At least she kept her dinner down.

The Red Arrows
Wow. These chaps always make hearts leap. Chocks away!

Some acts flop in the live arena, others thrive; we had high hopes that antipodean Zeppelin-apers Wolfmother would fall into the latter. We weren't to be disappointed.

Wolfmother specialize in true theatrical rock and roll: crazy organs, crazy hair and Sabbath riffs abound. 'Woman' sets the festival alight. We came hoping for good things from Wolfmother and left with a new favourite band. Best thing yet.

Kasabian make their grand entrance onto the stage as dusk falls, taking us into the night and whipping us into a frenzy with storming hits 'Empire' and 'LSF'. There's testosterone in the air, even coming from the women. There are lots of men on people's shoulders this time, not just arm-waving ladies ready to whip their unholstered boobs out for air at the first sight of a TV camera. This is some serious festival action. We're exhilarated, stupefied and we've still got headliners Muse to go...

Excitement prickles through the sticky air as those slick-suited superstars from the future (well, the West Country) are up next - and a stunning set is anticipated by all; Muse fans or nay.

It's a huge, intergalactic affair, with robots, screens and a ridiculously amazing lightshow worthy of the most extravagant of prog bands. Plus it's Matt Bellamy's 29th birthday, his "best ever" he tells us. Bless.

The set sparkles with stadium stompers such as 'Supermassive Blackhole', 'Starlight' and finally 'Take A Bow' - it's all just monstrously, dazzlingly good.

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