‘You’re creating a City in the middle of the country’

From Glastonbury to The End Of The Road, Summer festivals continue to colonise the countryside. But how do people pull together such enormous events year after year?

In our 2017 Summer Festivals Special, Olly meets Pete Lawrence, co-founder of The Big Chill, which went from being a low-key ‘festival in a club’ for 150 people in Islington to an massive outdoor happening, taking over huge venues across Britain, with acts including Lily Allen, The Proclaimers, Basement Jaxx, and Leonard Cohen.

How do you choose the perfect location for your booming event? How can you maintain a counter-culture ethos whilst wooing corporate sponsors? And how can you keep the Police on-side when so many attendees are doing drugs? Pete - now founder of campfireconvention.uk - reveals all...

LISTEN NOW:

Meanwhile, in this week’s Zeitgeist, Ollie Peart - fresh from sitting near Kate Adie at a train station - previews some Summer festivals you’ve never heard of, but should get tickets for NOW. In his top three are G!, in the Faroe Islands; the Archstoyanie Land Art Festival, 200 km southwest of Moscow; and, closer to home, the Brainchild festival, a ‘DIY and volunteer-led festival’ in East Sussex. Also, he explains why every festivalgoer needs a BioLite camping stove and Minipresso portable espresso machine, and receives an exciting invitation to Camp Bestival as part of his quest to become a true trends insider.

Elsewhere, Alix Fox brings news of sex festival Swingfields in this week’s Foxhole, and has a surprising suggested use for Original Source Mint and Tea Tree shower gel. She also tackles another prickly listener question - this week, how to speed up ejaculation when trying to conceive a child within your partner’s most fertile window of conception.

The Foxhole is sponsored by the sex legends who created mycondom.com. They stock all you need for festive fumble in a tent - including the cooling condoms Alix highlights this week. Remember to use our discount code ‘FOXHOLE’ to receive a bewildering 15% off.

If you have a question of sex for a future edition, do get in touch via our Feedback form - you can remain completely anonymous if you wish.

Finally, our song of the week is by brand new outfit Videocean. They sent us their debut track, ‘Fruitless Fever’, and we loved it. It’s out now on uber-cool underground imprint Bon Nudity: