Credit: Found On Internet

And I can’t blame the devout – anyone who has seen Gogol Bordello bring their gypsy blitz onstage has become addicted. And it seems that the Reading and Leeds experience has been equally stimulating to the band performing.

“It’s been great, massive crowd, good energy, total destruction my friend!” Bass player, Tommy Gobena enthuses, once we finally prise him away from the queue of kids posing for photos. The sheer number of people desperate to meet the multi-cultural 8-piece mirrors the surge in crowd numbers they’ve seen in the last year – in 2006 they were playing early afternoon in the NME tent; this year it’s mid-afternoon on the Main stage.

“I wasn’t a member of Gogol Bordello back then, but you can imagine from playing from a smaller stage to a bigger stage you get a massive crowd and massive attention,” Thomas philosophises. “But our music’s still the same, we still rock any place, anywhere, anytime.”

Thomas smiles whenever he finishes speaking. It’s a big wide grin that looks like it could eat me whole, but I suspect it’s because he’s enjoying every second of this. As well he might should – even as one of the new members of Gogol Bordello, Tommy has already travelled the world and plays in what people are increasingly referring to as one of the best live bands in the world.

“A producer friend [Eran Tabib of the Spin Doctors, no less] of mine in New York, heard from one of Gogol Bordello that they needed a bass player, sort of my kind of bass player, more groovy, dub’y reggae. He called me and was like ‘you might want to check them out’ and I loved it. I said ‘call me when you guys are ready’, they called me and it was done.”