Reading Festival is Glastonbury’s kid brother in more ways than one. The Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts is arguably the only UK festival bigger than Richfield Avenue’s offering; what’s more, the average crowd age of each reveals something more. Reading is the 16-year-old’s festival, and this year I was more aware of that fact than ever. As a faithful Reading Festival-goer of many years, I had no excuse for being annoyed at these young pretenders, as I had once been them myself. But I managed it anyway. Reading is my home festival, but it seems I have outgrown it.

But let’s focus on the music for a bit.

This year’s lineup certainly left much to be desired; Festival Republic must be seriously mistaken if they think they can follow 2012’s Friday and Sunday headliners, The Cure and Foo Fighters, with Green Day and Biffy Clyro. The former is a band so far from relevant it makes Rocky Balboa look 21^st century, while the latter is a good band with some solid songs, but has a long way to go before it reaches the pedigree necessary to close Reading Festival. My hat is off, however, to the organizers for the inspired move that was bringing Eminem back to Richfield. The man is a true superstar with fans all across the UK, and a range of excellent material that was certain to set the Main Stage alight.

What’s more, the NME Stage really seemed to be set to excel itself this year. When the music began on Friday with a late-announced set by Dry The River, one could tell that Reading’s second stage was going to be the place to be. Even though Deap Vally were a little disappointingly bland, an excellent showing by FIDLAR a short while later showed that their brand of youthful insincerity was exactly what the GCSE/A-Level crowd at Reading needed. Peace were on next, and showed a new maturity alongside their usual joyful exuberance, producing a highly stylized performance on a plain white stage which included a stellar cover of Disclosure’s ‘White Noise’ with a verse from ‘Another Brick In The Wall’ thrown in for good measure.

But it was Bastille who stole the day, with a stunning performance during which Dan Smith’s voice was almost (but not quite!) drowned out by the roar of a crowd who knew every single word to every single track, whether from the album or an earlier mixtape. Sadly, all these bands suffered from a disastrously poor microphone which meant anything they said between tracks was completely unintelligible. Fortunately someone did something about it just before Major Lazer took to the stage, at which point some classic festival misfortune conspired to force me to miss both them and A$AP Rocky, two of the acts I’d been looking forward to the most. From what I can tell watching coverage afterwards, the phone I dropped somewhere in the NME tent had little chance of survival.

But the rest of the day was far from a complete loss. I headed to the Festival Republic Stage, where an enchanting set from CHVRCHES was followed by an exhibition of pure, unbridled and confusing fun when Crystal Fighters took to the stage. Sebastian Pringle, dressed like a disco ball, careered around the stage like a demented satellite on acid as the English/Spanish folktronica band finished the day in style. Billy Joe who?

Saturday produced less excitement in quantity, but made up for it in quality. Early on the Festival Republic Stage, new boys Drenge were magnificent, running through the highlights of their excellent debut album and infecting the whole tent with their barely-contained adolescent rage. Swim Deep were, against all expectations, disappointingly lacklustre; after a second-class debut they really needed to make their hits count, but even ‘King City’ failed to inspire the usual euphoria (though to be fair, the indie kids jumped around anyway).

Soon afterwards, Foals did exactly what everyone has said about them all summer, and stepped up to the plate on the Main Stage. They’ve come a long way since ‘Cassius’ (which they didn’t even play) and Yannis Philippakis  looks like he’s finally where he’s always belonged: at the top.

After that it was back to the NME Stage, where Tame Impala were, predictably, their brilliant selves. Using the TV screens for their own psychedelic light show, they produced an atmosphere of hazy, trippy wonder. Finally, it was the moment I’d been waiting for for months. The moment I was missing Eminem for. The band behind my album of 2012: Alt-J.

They were everything I could have hoped for and more, dispelling all rumours of disappointing live shows almost as soon as the opening chord of ‘Intro’ had rung out through the tent. The crowd was spellbound by every song from hit single ‘Breezeblocks’ to ‘Interlude 1’, including an exquisite acapella cover of College and Electric Youth’s ‘A Real Hero’. Keyboardist Gus Unger-Hamilton was the only member to break the spell, with carefully timed exhortations to the crowd, but lead singer Joe Newman didn’t say a word throughout, preserving the mystery and aloofness of his genius. Instead, his only communication with the crowd came as he was unable to hold back his emotions at the sound of thousands of people singing his songs back at him. The set ended with the show-stopping ‘Taro’, as fake snow was launched into the crowd and Newman hid his face as the crowd roared the chorus for him.

Somewhere in between all of this, Jake Bugg was awful.

Sunday was always going to be an anticlimax after two such amazing days of music, but Alunageorge did their best to buck the trend with a set of true quality on the NME Stage in the early afternoon, including a brilliant cover of Montell Jordan’s ‘This Is How We Do It’. Tribes were surprisingly empty, considering their usual love for festivals, but things perked up later on the Festival Republic Stage, where Spector headlined to an archetypically chaotic crowd with real aplomb. After this, defeated by the weekend’s exertions, I sat down to watch Biffy Clyro from the back. Against my expectations, nostalgia took over, and I even felt a rush of emotion as fireworks launched into the air during ‘Mountains’. If that was the last song I’ll ever hear at Reading Festival, it was a pretty good one. ‘Mon the Biff.

Pity the Freshers.

Sure, they’ve made their offers, gawked at reading lists, googled ‘Sub Fusc’, and had Aunty Barbara in Auckland cooing congratulations down the phone line. But they’re currently staring into an Oxford-shaped abyss, and as with any abyss, it’s a disconcerting feeling. They have no idea what lies ahead. Doom? Gloom? Twats-in-red-trousers, wantonly discriminating against anyone without a private income and a public school education? Sobrani-smoking, silk-dressing-gown-toting, self-described ‘eccentrics’? Or is it all with ancient manuscripts, moth-eaten cardigans, and stony-faced silence?

My advice is not to turn to literature for help.

Before arriving here, impressions of the city tend to be constructed of a hazy mixture of terrified interview memories and media stereotypes. It’s tempting to turn to the multitude of novels set in Oxford for clarity, to paint a coherent picture of what life here will be like. Don’t do this. They lie. Every author’s rose-tinted image of punting and port is just waiting to be shattered when you realise that, actually, life in Oxford is mostly normal. Give or take a gown or two.

So here’s an anti-reading list of the most dangerous examples of fictionalised Oxford – the books definitely not to read before your arrival.

 Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh

‘“I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey – which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.”’

Let’s get the cliché out of the way. Evelyn Waugh’s magnum opus is the quintessential image of Oxford decadence, telling the tale of Charles Ryder’s embroilment with the Catholic, aristocratic Marchmain family, whom he meets through their Oxford undergraduate son, Sebastian. Though only the first part of the novel is set in Oxford, Ryder’s relationship with the fabulously wealthy, fabulously camp, fabulously alcoholic Sebastian has become a byword for the kind of champagne-quaffing hedonism that, even in darkest Christ Church, is rarely found in reality. Anyone caught carrying a pretentiously-named teddy bear is guaranteed a black eye by the end of Freshers.  

Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy

‘New Doctors emerged, their red and black gowned forms passing across Jude’s vision like inaccessible planets across and object glass’

Oxford’s access problem is, rightly, well documented. Even though only 7% of UK pupils attend private schools, 42.5% of Oxford’s 2012 Freshers were independently educated. In spite of all efforts to the contrary – and efforts are being made – its undergraduates are still almost universally upper-middle class. But read Jude the Obscure and realise how far we’ve come from Thomas Hardy’s day. His story of thwarted ambition and social prejudice centres around a working class Wessex lad, Jude Fawley, whose dreams of studying at Christminister (Oxford) are frustrated by his lack of fortune and formal education. It’s the novel that contains the most heart-wrenching misspelling in the English language – the ‘Done because we are to menny’ of Jude’s son’s suicide note – and even for a miserable bugger like Hardy, it’s very bleak. Avoid or you’ll arrive in Oxford feeling incurably resentful on Jude’s behalf. Just visit the Jericho pub named after it instead.

Northern Lights (1995) by Philip Pullman

‘Jordan College was the grandest and richest of all the colleges in Oxford… It had never been planned; it had grown piecemeal, with past and present overlapping at every spot, and the final effect was one of jumbled and squalid grandeur.’

To put it bluntly, real Oxford isn’t like Philip Pullman’s Oxford because Pullman’s Oxford is set in a parallel universe. Sorry. Unlike the one from which his protagonist Lyra sets out, we have no daemons, witches or armoured bears. We are not ruled over by a shadowy theocratic ‘Magisterium’ and there is no Final Honours School in Experimental Theology. We’ve got plenty of dust, sure, but no Dust. Start jabbering about General Oblation Boards and Miltonian conspiracy and find yourself quick-marched to the college counselling service and sternly instructed to stop with the substance abuse.

And these are only the three worst offenders. From Martin Amis to Alan Bennett, Inspector Morse to Zuleika Dobson, English literature is littered with depictions of Oxford’s ‘dreaming spires’. But spires don’t dream. They just attract flocks of tourists. As you sit on the pavement after your first Jaeger-sticky night at Bridge, trying to smoke a cigarette the wrong way round and crying because you dropped your cheesy chips, you’ll realise that the Oxford of fiction is precisely that – fictitious.

The Pin 

Having seen Alex Owen carry the Cambridge Footlights a couple of years ago, I was quite excited to see him given control of his own double act – in tandem with Ben Ashenden. These two have already had breaks on BBC3 and ITV, and it is easy to see why; with Owen as the taking-himself-too-seriously straight man, and Ashenden as the nerdy, awkward foil, these two have a natural comedic chemistry that allows them to get the audience roaring with belly-laughs with only a minimum of traditional “sketch material”. The bits, genuinely amusing in their own right (Frank Lampard the thespian, over-politically correct exam questions); but it is the in-character fillers, with Owen venting his frustration at his partner’s Mr Bean-like incompetence, that really drive the laughs. A very funny show, and worth seeing.

 The Pin will be performing at Pleasance Courtyard until 26^th August. Tickets cost £10. 

BEASTS

I was only able to catch this group for a 20 minute slot at a late night revue, but it is one of my regrets of the 2013 Fringe that I wasn’t able to see their full 60 minutes. These three had a very successful debut run in 2012, and return this year with plenty of buzz about their new material. The trio have a strong chemistry, with each of the rotating the high and low status roles, in what is perhaps a more traditional style of sketch comedy that The Pin. A lot of the material relies on slightly warped reproductions of childhood classics – an oikish pig geezer explaining his building nous to a big bad wolf, sullen Teenage Mutant Ninja turtles – sandwiched between quick one-line bits. The formula is not ground-breaking, but it is highly entertaining.

 BEASTS will be performing at Pleasance Courtyard until 26^th August. Tickets cost £9.

Lead Pencil

Lead Pencil generated fantastic reviews for their debut show in 2012, and equally promising feedback from this year’s piece; I was understandably a bit surprised to find a few spare seats at the back of their Underbelly venue. The only possible reason I can conceive for this is that their show runs during the 1-2pm death slot, in which most of their target audience (i.e. anyone familiar with late 1990s mass culture) will still be conked out from a late night before. If you are feeling a bit muggy of an early afternoon, go and watch Lead Pencil; the sketches, which focus mainly on the fruits of our youth (Art Attack, crappy Nokias and the Fresh Prince), will tickle your nostalgic nerve as well as your sense of humour, and the whole show is performed with such incredible energy that you will leave the room feeling buoyed ahead of the rest of your day.

Lead Pencil will be performing at Underbelly, Bristo Square until 26^th August. Tickets cost £9.50.

Cambridge Footlights

The Footlights have had a long and and happy relationship with the Fringe, and have become one of the best-known acts at the Festival. This year has seen them return once again to Pleasance’s Ace Dome, though I can safely say that their sell-out audiences are thanks to the strength of the 2013 material, and not trading on the Footlights history. This was probably the strongest sketch show that I saw at this year’s Fringe, with a fantastic mix of experimental sketches (“Press this button when the sketch should end”, “Here is a sketch menu” etc) and amusing running jokes; Matilda Wnek’s death machine saga carried the show. Wnek was just one of a core trio of brilliant actresses (alongside Rosa Robson and Emma Sidi) who, alongside the lovable Matty Bradley, provided a whole host of meomrable characters and scenarios.

 Cambridge Footlights will be performing at Pleasance Dome until 26^th August. Tickets cost £9.50.

Oxford Revue

This year’s Revue was right at the other end of the spectrum from The Pin and the Footlights in terms of its presentation; no white back drop and plain uniforms, but a wonderfully cluttered set and eccentric outfits. The skits were equally quirky, and managed to extract the maximum laughter from a given scenario without ever taking it too far: a World War I soldier with cramp, a rather difficult birds and bees slideshow, a brilliantly honest primary school teacher. Perhaps the finest thing about this show is the quality of the transitions, with sketches fading into one another with a smoothness and precision that indicates an enormous amount of thought and hard-work in rehearsal. Watch out also for the running jokes, one of which concludes with a rather spectacular bang. Also, check out The Oxford Revue Presents: Toby Mather, for the best comic poetry this side of Tim Key.

The Pin will be performing at Underbelly, Cowgate until 25^th August. Tickets cost £9.