Top three:

3) The Waterson Family Special - wonderful idea, well executed, great to hear all the classic old Waterson stuff. And wonderful to have a chat with Norma at the LNE later on. She says I can sing! (She's wrong but hey!) Only disappointment was not hearing Maria do anything alone, she's got a great voice, just like her mum's. Ollie Knight was on the mixing desk.

2) Kate Rusby & John McCusker - huge fan and it's great to see Kate develop. First time I saw her supporting Show of Hands she was nervous as hell and kept coughing mid-song. Next time was a few years back at Sidmouth just as i was falling in love with 'Sleepless', when she was fantastic but still blathered like a headless chicken! This time she was so much more confidant, a proper star now. Really enjoyed the band stuff too, and didn't notice the sound being too bad.

1)        BELLOWhead – best gig for years, a brilliant, vibrant sound, a totally crazy young crowd, dancing like mad. Spiers and Boden with Benjo Kirkpatrick on guitary things, a three piece brass section, strings, woodwind, a percussionist, everything. Wow! Unforgettable. When you see something like this you know folk has a great future!

Other highlights were Pete Coe, the Seven Champions Molly Dancers doing 'Byker Hill' (what a voice the singer has!), Sid Kipper, getting the assembled musicians outside the Mexican to play me 'Princess Royale' (a tune that haunted my every step in Sidmouth!) at around 7am on Saturday morning, meeting loadsa cool people and oodles of stuff I can't begin to think about…

Very few bad shows. Old Swan Band were pretty dull and Gordon Potts needs to chill out, bless him. The real clanger was John Tams and Barry Coope, a gig I was really looking forward too (so many people called it a highlight, what gig were you at?). Tams drunkenly rambled on in a sometimes funny but more often tedious manner, and was lazy with his songs, constantly interrupting them and failing to make any effort. All the classics I'd been longing to here were mauled ('Lay Me Low' should have been a crowd lifting singalong epic, but he sung it Dylan-esque, out of time with weird emphaisis). Most criminal was Coope's EVIL keyboard, some kind of hideous 80s relic that sounded like an Enya backing track and kind of tinkled all over Tams's wonderfully bare songs. Oh well, a minor gripe in an otherwise amazing festival.

Oh one other highlight, sneaky off from my stewarding duties to go to the celidh in the ford for half an hour, getting absolutely drenched, then doing back to my post in sodden clothes and pretending I'd been there all along!

Murk