Now a staple festival favourite, Marcus Brigstocke’s Early Edition kicks off the Literary Arena’s line-up bright and early this morning, guests including Andre Vincent and Phill Jupitus as irreverent topical comedy puts the Daily Mail and similar tabloid villains through the grinder.

The chat ranges from dissecting appalling journalism to the festival-going experience; that is, from tales of unlikely unexploded bombs littering the Suffolk countryside to Brigstocke’s ‘blue splash-back’ toilet trips, as well as rumours of Geoff Hoon MP being a genuine Latitude regular. There’s also the Mirror’s mention of a leopard-crocodile fight, curly wurlys being used as a bribe to ‘discipline’ misbehaving school kids, and Andre’s sly digs at Brigstocke’s ultra-posh festival motor-home ‘The Superbrig’, reportedly made by a company sharing the namesake of Red Dwarf nerd Rimmer.

Come mid-afternoon and the tent is bustling again, this time for Simon Armitage’s reading from his autobiographical Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock Star Fantasist. A chatty and laidback persona on stage, Armitage reads passages which resonate with wit and real feeling, charting his and a friend’s attempts to form a new rock band, or, as Armitage has it, ‘a guy who works as a respected computer technician and wears glasses for reading, and a poet and father in his forties’. Not ideal rock star material, then, but Armitage’s obvious passion for the music of his youth and the odd contemporary band is both understandable and admirable.  He also mentions a chapter in the book that focuses on his reading as headliner of Latitude’s Poetry Arena last year, recalling how his declaration that ‘I used to work with drug users in Manchester’ was met with pockets of applause and cheering from a half-cut corner of the audience. In fact, after inviting questions from the floor, Armitage announces his reading at the Poetry Arena on Sunday, which again promises to be totally unmissable. In the meantime, it’s tongue-twister performance piece ‘Luddenden Town’ that Armitage finishes with to rapturous applause, leaving the audience to head out and soak up the glorious July sunshine.


Ben Wilkinson