Beer and bands: what's new on the festival front...

  • THE start of Wood festival tomorrow marks the traditional start of the festival year. And while our minds turn to matters of music (and whether we need to patch-up the tent and buy new wellies) one Oxfordshire festival promoter has had his mind on something far more important – beer.

It seems Cornbury Music Festival director Hugh Phillimore has been swapping his day job as a celebrity party planner to moonlight as a local brewer, as our picture of him adding hops to the first batch of Cornbury commemorative festival ale at Hook Norton Brewery, proves.

The zesty, golden brew is called The Glorious 10th and is being specially brewed to celebrate the festival’s first decade.

Along with the beer, Hugh has pulled together a stellar birthday line-up of acts, partly chosen by festival-goers in an online poll. Headline acts include Van Morrison, Bellowhead, Keane and Squeeze, with sets also coming from Echo & the Bunnymen, Imelda May, our cover star Seth Lakeman, and two new additions – former Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell and Tanita Tikaram.

As well as being available at the festival itself, from July 5-7, The Glorious 10th is available at all 43 Hook Norton pubs, where punters can also try their hand at winning a pair of festival tickets. For your nearest pub go to hooky.co.uk. For festival details go to cornburyfestival.com

  • Ale is also on the mind of the organisers of the next big local festival – Wychwood. The team have revealed there will be a Hobgoblin’s Beer Festival at the event, at Cheltenham, from May 31-June 2.

The event will see Witney’s Wychwood Brewery offering more than 10 varieties of pale ale and bitter from their own and other local breweries. The festival has also revealed its BBC Stage line-up, which features eight up-and-coming acts from Oxfordshire. The melodic My Grey Horse, striking psychedelic-blues act Vienna Ditto, indie-folk band Empty White Circles, Dallas Don’t, Sier Pin Sky, duo Sweet William, outlandish art-rock outfit The Goggenheim (stars of last week’s Oxford Punt) and Grundle Bay will all play on the Saturday.

They join a line-up that already includes Bill Bailey, Soul II Soul, The Human League, Dreadzone, Lucy Rose and Oxford’s genre-bending Brickwork Lizards.

For more details go to wychwoodfestival.com.

  • BLUR bassist and celebrity cheesemaker Alex James today reveals a clutch of new acts for his Big Feastival in Kingham.

Lianne La Havas, Mark Owen, Bernhoft, The Milk, Dodgy and Lewis actor-turned musician Laurence Fox, will join Rizzle Kicks, Basement Jaxx, Take That’s Mark Owen and KT Tunstall at the festival from August 30-September 1.

Apart from the music, The Big Feastival also features a decent line-up of stars from the world of food.

Joining co-host Jamie Oliver, Gennaro Contaldo, Valentine Warner and the cheese-master himself, is Rachel Khoo, star of TV's The Little Paris Kitchen; Scotland's youngest Michelin-starred chef Tom Kitchin;  former Roux Scholar and Bocuse d’Or entrant Simon Hulstone and young guns Jonray and Peter Sanchez Iglesias from Bristol’s Casamia restaurant.r

And for the kids there’s CBeebies megastar Justin Fletcher. Don't laugh... judging by the queues for autographs when he pklayed Wychwood a couple of years ago, he could well be the biggest name on the bill!

Fot more details and to buy tickets, go to thebigfeastival.com