Thousands attend last days of Latitude
Thousands of people are making their way home from Suffolk today after a weekend of music, comedy, film and theatre at the Latitude festival.The event, at Henham Park, near Southwold saw 20,000 people watching hundreds of acts over three days, with headline acts including Damien Rice, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and Arcade Fire.
Thousands of people are making their way home from Suffolk today after a weekend of music, comedy, film and theatre at the Latitude festival.
The event, at Henham Park, near Southwold saw 20,000 people watching hundreds of acts over three days, with headline acts including Damien Rice, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and Arcade Fire.
Among the more well known attendees were Glastonbury festival organiser Michael Eavis and government chief whip Geoff Hoon.
After a quieter start on Friday the weekend's sell-out events were noticeably busier than last year's inaugural festival, when 12,000 people attended.
The extra numbers meant several people were unable to get in to comedy performances by Phil Jupitus, Dylan Moran, and Jeremy Hardy, and some festival goers were turned away from a night of music curated by Mark Lamarr.
There were also some complaints that facilities had not expanded to keep pace with ticket sales, with a single toilet and shower block in each of the two main camp sites and timed slots for male and female showering.
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But despite the problems, the crowds enjoyed strong performances across the festival.
Saturday saw an energetic performance from hotly-tipped Brazilian electro-rock band CSS - including a cover of L7's Pretend That We're Dead - with singer Lovefoxxx inhaling helium and dispensing with her shoes to jump headfirst into the crowd.
Vaudevillian super-group The Good The Band and The Queen gave a more sombre, top-hatted, performance, although frontman Damon Albarn did crack a smile long enough to quip that it was good to have something to travel up the A12 for, rounding off the set with a count to 12 in celebration of the road.
Au Revoir Simone's set on the main Obelisk arena on Sunday was the only performance seriously affected by rain across the whole weekend, but the clouds soon parted for performances by The Rapture and ex-Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker, who ended his set with a crowd-pleasing cover of Eye of the Tiger.
Canadian art-rockers Arcade Fire rounded off the festival with a storming firework-backed finale, that kept tired festival goers on their feet to the very last.
Other highlights from Saturday and Sunday included two live instalments of Marcus Brigstocke's Early Edition radio show, poetry from Simon Armitage, and local theatre group Mouth to Mouth's staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
A Latitude spokesperson said sales had been limited to 20,000 and that security had been tight to ensure all attendees had tickets, but encouraged festival goers to submit their comments to the event's website to help improve future festivals.
