Isle of Wight Festival: God apparently didn't get tickets

With no Glastonbury festival this year, the regulars had to find some other place to go. The cascading heavy rain which makes everyone's life a misery apparently chose to attend the Isle of Wight festival instead:

Problems began on Thursday morning when the main car park had become waterlogged from heavy rain overnight.

Organisers were forced to open extra fields and bring in metal tracks so vehicles could be directed to overflow car parks. Many had to be towed because of the mud.

Naturally, being an island meant that the knock-on effect of traffic gridlock was a ferry fuck-up:

Mud at the festival site caused by heavy rain led to huge delays in parking and resulted in tailbacks as far back as the port of Fishbourne.

Three boats carrying about 600 people were held in the Solent until the cars stuck at the port had moved and the passengers could be discharged.

A spokesman for ferry operator Wightlink said: “We can't do anything else with them until we can get into port to unload. At the moment we are in the lap of the gods with the Isle of Wight Festival.

"As soon as the berth is free they will be able to unload, but we just don't know when that will be. It has nothing to do with us, and it's not a problem caused by us."

When people eventually make it to the site, things will get even more miserable for them.

Pearl Jam have managed to arrive.

Gordon in the morning: A rolling Dappy gathers Kate Moss

The idea that Kate Moss spent the weekend trying to catch N-Dubz's eye isn't too unlikely - after all, owners of young bands are warned to spray regularly to avoid an infestation. But there's something about Gordon's story which doesn't quite add up:

IT won't be long before KATE MOSS is greeting pals with "Na, na niiiii" and wearing NANA bling - as she's a massive fan of N-DUBZ.
The supermodel spent most of the weekend at the Isle Of Wight festival following the trio around.

Hmm. Odd thing is, though, there's just one, really crappy, cameraphone picture offered to support this claim. Perhaps she was genuinely stalking them, and spent most of the time hiding behind bins.

Nobody in the photo really looks like they're that thrilled to be there. Kate Moss least of all.

I'm not a psychologist, but I think the look on Moss' face is 'oh, God, if this photo ever appears anywhere, what's left of my alt-cred will flow away'.

Isle Of Wight: Hide! Hide!

Last year, we reckon, was the peak oil year for festivals.

Now, then, we're in the long, slow, steady decline. As if the prospect of Status Quo AND Tom Jones at Glastonbury didn't prove it, here's a headline from the Daily Mail's RSS feed which, I think, shows just how broken festivals have become:

Time to go back to gigs with two, maybe three acts, and no jugglers or felafel stands in a two-mile radius.

John Lydon complains that things aren't like what they were in his day, and how kids today, they don't know they're bloody born

John Lydon, off I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and member of a Sid Vicious tribute act doesn't hold with modern festivals:

“I was remembering festivals in the 70s and how crazy mad they used to be and what great fun,” he told the Daily Star.

“This lot were deckchairs, posh Butlins – what I was performing to was polite schoolteachers.”

“But it’s all right because it’s not the kids that need education – it’s that lot. I didn’t go to Glastonbury because what’s that without the hippies and the rave?”

What a terrible shock it must be for Lydon to find himself in front of an audience of middle-aged, middle-class professionals unlike the audience for 1970s nostalgia shows he usually plays, who tend to be late middle-aged, middle-class semi-professionals.

More to the point: What's Glastonbury without the hippies? But, erm, wasn't your whole raison d'etre taking a stand against the hippies, John?

Gordon in the morning: The gossip columnist looked at Johnny

Most people - faced with John Lydon testing the ground for a new Sex Pistols album - would counsel against. Gordon sounds excited at the prospect:

Johnny said: “There could be a new record. That would be nice.

“But I won’t do anything in a patronising way. The music, the subject and the attitude all have to be right at the same time. Everything has to be from the heart.”

Lydon's main source of income in the last few years has been the US real estate business. If you didn't know better, talk of creaking out a bunch of new Sex Pistols songs would suggest that was a business in some sort of trouble.

Smart, of course, with his borrowed suits and office cubicle probably still thinks there's something rebellious about old men and past glories. It's almost heartbreaking to see that he not only still believes in "Johnnny Rotten":

Frontman JOHNNY ROTTEN, real name John Lydon, revealed the possibility after the hellraisers’ rip-roaring gig at the Isle Of Wight Festival on Saturday.

"Real name John Lydon". Really? Who knew, eh?

Lydon shows exactly why we don't need a new Pistols album, by launching into an attack on Coldplay:

“I pity the poor bastards who have to watch them. They are utterly humourless.

“I met them a few years ago, said hello and realised they were just men in anoraks. They looked like a gang of little poncy masturbators.

“There is no fun, they don’t offer joy. Their music has a couple of quite nice tones here and there but it’s a box of tosh sold to slightly inadequate, half-baked people.”

Here is a man who is flogging a failed teenage rebellion to men in their 50s attacking Coldplay for taking money off inadequates. At least Coldplay don't pretend to be outsiders looking in.

Lydon then tries to start a war of words with The Stranglers - The bloody Stranglers. In 2008! - which, surprisingly, Smart gives the man space in a newspaper to churn on and on about whose self-tribute act is the more genuine.

Smart really does - with a straight face - caption a photo:

Encouraging anarchy ... Johnny

Encouraging anarchy. Oh, Gordon, do you really think your boss would let you run a fawning piece on Lydon if he threatened anything more dangerous than a spot of mild social democracy?

Brown bottled off

Josh Homme thinks he's got problems. It's one thing to have people throw stuff at you at a festival, but when the audience is tossing bottles at you when you're headlining, something's gone hugely awry.

That's what happened to Ian Brown - bottled off stage at his own gig in Sheffield, and left with a nasty eye injury. He still turned up to do his Isle Of Wight set yesterday, though, in the unlikely position of hoping for a better reception from a field audience.

Police called to end festival

No, no, the headline isn't anything to do with the regular meltdowns of public order at the end of the Leeds festival; it's about Sting who will be dragging the now-overstaying Police reunion to offer some sort of climax to the Isle of Wight Festival next summer:

"It's a coup to get The Police," said promoter John Giddings. "We're very happy to have the biggest tour of the last two years stopping by."

That's the biggest tour of the last two years if you don't count The Rolling Stones tour. Or Madonna's 2006 jaunt.

Ash to Ashes?

The end of Ash's Isle of Wight festival date has sent those of us who still care into full-on Ash-split mode. Introducing a song, Tim Wheeler told the crowd:

"This is our last song off our final album."

If they're having a fire sale, we're thinking of putting in a bid for Tim.

The sixty-second interview

What's really disappointing about Amy Winehouse's swiftly aborted interview during Channel 4's Isle of Wight Festival coverage is, surely, if she's so drunk she's only going to give one-syllable answers, it should just be No! Noooo! Nooooo!

Moss side

It's probably unwise to condemn someone on the basis of a quote in Victoria Newton's Bizarre column, especially when it's been filtered through from the Isle of Wight festival. So let's hope that Kate Moss didn't really respond to Blake Fielder-Civil's goading about Pete Doherty by calling him "a fucking queer":

An onlooker said: “Kate went mental. Blake asked where her boyfriend was and she sneered ‘Gone for a p*ss, you fucking queer’.

“Kate shouted to her security guard, ‘Get him out the way’, and he was thrown out.”

Surely someone who works in the fashion industry wouldn't be tossing "queer" about as an insult, would she?

Mutya misses the ferry; fails to join Armada

Sunday Mirror gossip guru Zoe went to the Isle of Wight Festival; she spotted Mutya, who was down to pop up and duet with Groove Armada didn't make it.

Apparently, she claimed she "missed the ferry", which even Zoe wouldn't fall for - it's not a long wait for the next one. However, Zoe has decided this was "stage fright" rather than, just maybe, not being that arsed about slogging down to the Isle of Wight to do one song, have some piss thrown at you, and then hoof back up north.