FESTIVAL DIARIES

Reading

By Linda Serck

Presenter of BBC Radio Berkshire's The Session Introducing, Linda is back at Reading for her 7th festival to check out new bands

Back again

Well here we go again. The field that I drive past and resolutely ignore for most of the year becomes, for one weekend only, one of the world's most famous rock festivals.

I'm dropped off by the Reading Evening Post buildings, armed with cameras, recording equipment, the kitchen sink, and then join the thousand-headed snake that colourfully trundles along to the festival site.

The main stage looms like a grey dinosaur above the shrubbery. We have arrived.

Haircuts

So I'm all wristbanded up, I've been given a nuclear orange bib to wear for filming and taking photos for the BBC's Reading and Leeds website, and have done my first few pre-recorded interviews for my radio show this evening.

The guest area is teeming with a combination of those people who are playing the festival and therefore are bona fide musicians, and those who are trying achingly hard to look like rock stars.

So yes the sun is shining, but there are more shades here than a Dulux colour chart.

And don't get me started on the haircuts. Though The Horrors easily outdo any attempts to win the 'biggest, spikiest hair of the festival' prize.

I for one am determined to wear my bright red Wellington boots. Yes I know my feet are slowly dissolving in the heat, but damn it I bought these boots expecting mud, and I shall find mud.

Interference

An hour to go before my radio show live from the Reading Festival. It's a relatively calm hour compared to the last few - owing to my grim discovery that my mobile broadcasting equipment (inexplicably called a Woody) is happily transmitting walkie-talkie fuzz rather than me.

But Radio 1 saves the day. Their chief engineer on site provides us with the kit we need from their broadcasting tent backstage, and so it's back to all systems go.

Sitting in the little Radio One enclosure with headphones on fools some passers-by into thinking Zoe Ball has returned to the station - my passing resemblance to her always foxes people at festivals. It happens every year.

Kings of Leon

Show over, I'm cracking open a beer and I head out to watch Kings Of Leon on the main stage. Brilliant band, and it's amazing how good a view you can get from the side of the stage.

A tentative call to my friends to see if it's in any way possible to find them among the 80,000 throng leads to success. I find them in the dusk and amid the dust by one of the bars.

Albert Hammond Jr

It's nice to be among the crowd after a day dashing about backstage - the donut stand almost lures me away from heading to see Albert Hammond Jr on the Carling Stage, but my brain soon reminds me I've just shoved a veggie burger down my throat, so for the sake of health it's probably not wise.

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