Celebrating Isle of Wight festivals 2010

While there's a lot of excitement about Tom Jones joining the Isle of Wight Festival this year we want to take a moment to celebrate (slightly late) a rather fine accolade recently given to Rob da Bank and his Bestival.  Last Friday the Bestival 2010 won Best Large Festival at the UK Festival Awards.

Photo of Rob receiving his award here.

Seeing as the Bestival has only been going since 2004 this really does represent a meteoric rise for Rob's Bestival.  One of our contributors was at the Bestival throughout this year, with his camera.  VentnorBlog recently featured his pictures here.

The graph shows just how the Bestival has had to scale since 2004 when 5000 people attended.  They've risen to the challenge with aplomb!  This year - the Year of the Fantastic - bands included The Prodigy, The Flaming lips, Dizzee Rascal, Rolf Harris, Gil Scott-Heron, Roxy Music, Marc Almond, Level 42, Echo & The Bunnymen, The XX, Howard Jones, Heaven 17, Chase & Status, Tinie Tempah, Rox, Simian Mobile Disco, Stornoway, Hot Chip, The Wailers, Lucky Elephant, Ellie Goulding, as well as the usual collection of Isle of Wight bands. 

These performers were spread over the main stage, the big top, the rock stage and the bandstand, as well as various other smaller performance areas. 

Some of our favourite pictures - possibly the most photographed fancy dress outfit at the event:

Wayne Coynes of The Flaming Lips whips everyone into a frenzy - 'she can be a helicopter' - cue everyone in the audience making helicopter noises and whirling their arms above their heads! Their set was like a carnival, with ticker tape poppers and huge exploding balloons filled with confetti thrown out over the crowd.

 LCD Soundsystem close the Big Top at 1AM on Monday morning with an amazing euphoric set (can you tell I'm a fan?)

We'll definitely be there again in 2011!