Credit: David Harrison

Another year end, another end of festival season, another Bestival, except this year something has changed. Sure last year was a dirty big affair compared with the one before, and sure another weight gain was expected, but nothing quite prepared us for the Beastival that greeted us.

Apart from size, with a new range of tents spilling into what used to be the festival shopping area, Bestival has also gained in sheer entertainment value, with everyone dressing up in stupid costumes from the moment they disembark from the ferry. At first this appears to be over-anxious fancy dress, but soon it becomes obvious that most of these men don’t need an excuse to put on a dress. Cross dressing, it seems, has become the only fashion choice at Bestival – and luckily there are stalls on hand for those who only came in trousers.

Unfourtunately no one is selling waxing strips – which a few of the boys in suspenders would have benefited from – although there is a large truck doing make overs.

Music wise there’s some big hitters – such as Pet Shop Boys, who naturally draw a large, but strangely not very loud, crowd and Kid Creole and the Coconuts, who come on apparently slagging off the Cuban Brothers for being fakes (No? really?). They soon have us singing about not being Annie’s Daddy and stools.

Music is not usually the main point of Bestival (it’s more about the punters and ludicrous behaviour) and as headliners go it’s all OK, big pulling stuff. But this year throughout the festival there’s some truly golden stretches of programming. And none of it comes close to Saturday night’s sequence that goes Switch, Justice, Erol Alken, Sugardaddy, Greg Wilson.

A dream club line up if ever there was and all occurring in the new easily navigable clutch of tents just outside the main arena. It’s small wonder that a few of the people I meet there haven’t seen anything else of the festival.

Switch naturally tears the Big Top tent down with his stomping take on glitch-house - showing no respect for the title of the arena they are playing, Justice turn the, ahem, 'Hidden Disco' into a whooping, frenzied, mosh-pit. With barely enough room to stand and people frantically jumping around shouting a certain anthem at top of their exhausted lungs, it really wasn't very hidden at all. They easily take the “performance of festival” trophy back to France with them.