Bestival 2k13: Behind the flaps

So we went to Bestival on press passes and tried to pass ourselves off as real music journalists for a weekend. You know, the kind who know the difference between Carl Craig and Carl Cox, and how to pronounce Todd Terje’s name.

What happened? Well, Elton succeeded in making a field of grime-covered festival goers feel like they were in Vegas, Bastille looked like characters from Captain Pugwash, and Snoop avoided airport scandal – though some members of the Wu-tang were less lucky. We didn’t see them anyway because when they played on Friday, as my companion Miles was still dicking around with airport security in China.

Here is our tale of trial and tribulation as we sought a golden interview with a superstar.

an im-press-ive wristband

When Charlie Bucket found his golden ticket in that fated bar of Wonka, his subsequent adventure was beyond his wildest dreams. Initially we weren’t so lucky. But Charlie and Grandpa Joe didn’t give up after a few failed attempts, did they?

So nor did we. And the payoff was pretty fucking awesome. We got our superstar interview with a real artist.

Charlie showing his excitement/gratitude to Grandpa Joe

Nope, it wasn’t Snoop – though we did send him a Facebook message during his gig (he still hasn’t read it). Nor did we interview Elton John, despite a tenuous link to his guitarist through Jo’s mum’s brother’s hairdresser’s second-hand cat. Or something. Miles also insisted on tweeting ODB from Wu Tang Clan, but again strangely had no luck.

On the way back to our tent one day, we happened to bump into both members of Bondax, looking a little like Farmer’s Bunce and Bean from Fantastic Mr Fox. We bounded over, thrust out our wristbands, and grinned. And it worked. Our first interview**:

See the similarity?

Cool, calm, and collected, Miles opened with, “Hi we’re from The Tab and we wondered if you’d maybe like to chat to us casually for like five minutes at some point not like an interview but a chat y’know quite friendly for like no more than five minutes or something yeah?”

“Ummm”, said the fat one, looking at the skinny one who actually does DJing for an answer.

We held our breath.

“We’re actually just trying to enjoy our weekend”, said the skinny one.

“Yeah safe alright no worries guys have a good one yeah”.

(**almost).

Happa to see you (?)

Further attempts at interviewing megastars involved stopping the lead singer of the Correspondents for a full 7 seconds before he ran off claiming to need a poo.

Following this was an awkward episode involving 16-year-old techno golden-boy Happa, companion Miles, and a random drugged up guy trying to take a Vine with a disposable camera.

Found in Press Tent next to Miles’ charger

Meanwhile, Jo was struggling to keep it together due to our inability to secure the golden scoop: Miles soon found him in the press tent earnestly trying to persuade two bewildered journalists that he genuinely wanted to interview them the next day because “it would be meta and funny and things”. He was ushered away before he could cause offence.

Then, we struck gold. After slapping some bongos at our mid-afternoon ‘Rhythms of Bestival’ masterclass, we accosted the next two oldest participants, and demanded that they let us interview them. With parental consent, they agreed.

Mercury Prize Winners 2020

The Golden Ticket was finally ours.

We think this interview speaks for itself – listen to ‘Rumours Interview’ on Audioboo

(c) Miles Lawrence

*we did literally none of these things.