* As expected, Reading Festival again proved itself a monster among music gatherings — with three full days of spectacular rock, dance, indie and pop — drawing to a close in the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday.

While never claiming to be the prettiest festival, this year’s proved particularly messy, in every sense of the word.

Highlights are too numerous to mention but include a blistering set of tight electro-pop by Metronomy, scorching Gypsy-punk from Gogol Bordello, and banging dance sets by Nero, Flume, Pendulum and Netsky and, in particular, Disclosure, who should surely be crowned kings of the festival, closing it on Sunday night in a hedonistic frenzy with their arms in the air anthem Latch.

They made the main stage headliners Paramore and Queens Of The Stone Age on Friday, Arctic Monkeys on Saturday and Blink-182 on Sunday, look stodgy and lacklustre by comparison.

The festival’s managing director Melvin Benn was, however, a fan of the main stage action, telling us: “Without a doubt, my highlights this year were all four headliners. I’d like to thank them for putting on absolutely incredible shows.

“I really enjoyed Imagine Dragons too, their set on the main stage blew me away. Across the weekend, at Reading and Leeds, I witnessed 200,000 music fans having a ball. What a fantastic year for our beloved festival.

“2014 is going to be a tough one to beat, but one special headliner for 2015 is confirmed, now the work continues to confirm another mind blowing line-up for the fans next year.”

* With the dust barely settled over Little John’s Farm, earlybird tickets have already gone on sale for next year’s bonanza, at this year’s prices. Go to seetickets.com n Of particular interest to Oxfordshire music-lovers was the performance at Reading by Klaxons

The band’s unique brand of Golden Skans-era nu-rave was blended with their newer electro and rock to form a powerful crowd-pleasing set which was brought to a close, suitably enough, with their spine-tingling cover of Grace’s Not Over Yet.

The band will next be in action on September 27 in Oxford’s South Park, where they headline OxfordOxford, alongside Gaz Coombes, Katy B, Tunng, and Oxford bands Flights of Helios, Pixel Fix and Dance a la Plage If their Reading show was anything to go by, it looks like being an amazing night.

Tickets for OxfordOxford festival (September 26-28) are also still available from oxfordoxford.co.uk