The Cure, and P J Harvey make Saturday a night to remember at Bestival

With a lunchtime start, there's a chance to catch up on sleep before returning to the arena in a fancy dress costume not built to last any bad weather. One heavy downpour later and the sodden creation is discarded in favour of a waterproof plastic bag. The ground becomes treacherous for a few minutes, and we slide about amongst the Freddie Mercurys, Amy Winehouses, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Slashes, Katty Perrys, and Cheryl Coles. There's even those who have brought their own vacuum cleaners for the cross dressing Freddie role, and there's also some decent puns, my personal favourite was the woman who had come as Velvet Underground (top marks - and original). There's surprisingly few Robert Smiths, and big gangs of Devo fans.

The rain fails to dampen anyone's spirits, and in fact every one of the dozen festivals I've been too this summer have all had rain on only one day, and Bestival is no exception.

It's not just the festival goers that like to dress up, Bestival's main stage also looks lovely, as do the many fields and areas that make up the site, a lot of work has clearly gone into making this site looking the best of any UK festival.

Toots and the Maytals start late, and the rain hits again during Toots' daughter - Leba's performance. She's the prelude to the main event with Toots himself not taking to the stage for some 20 minutes of an overrunning set. We then get warmed up, as the sun and some crowd participation kick in with a sparse set including 'Pressure Drop', and '54-56 Was My Number', alongside 'Take Me Home Country Roads'. The set also features a lot of audience interaction, with the old, "When I say Yeah, you say..." routine. It's 'Monkey Man' which pleases those in ape costumes in the audience no end, and sends a ripple of smiles through the soggy crowd.

The diminutive Katy B brings our first dose of dubstep to the main stage, and the crowd are happily bouncing along to it, before Village People drag in various incarnations of themselves, and a colourful crowd for their set, and the finale of the whole field doing the actions to 'YMCA' is a sight that's not easily forgotten.

Paloma Faith looks the part with a silver painted face and a Victorian dress that gives a hint of Michael Jackson's Thriller suit. It's just a shame her songs are a bit bland, and at one point she showcases a new record, that may not even sound like this. Even the Huge plastic balls and her Cockney patter fail to do it for me. The crowd on the other hand seem to dig it.

I on the other hand leap about happily to Skinny Lister who deliver their rum soaked sea shanties to a jigging crowd at Sailor Jerry's in one of their many shows over the weekend. They offer us a flagon of rum to share as the dancing girls whirl and spin with us, terrific!

Grandmaster Flash takes over, and it seems he didn't have much to do with the record I know him for 'White Lines' which isn't actually his song! Instead we get a proper DJ Set, for some reason I thought it would be an old school set of old tunes. The set is chock full of festival crowd pleasers (which we have heard now numerous times over the weekend) that get everyone's hands in the air, and more bits flying from fancy dress costumes that aren't built to last this much dancing.

I decide to give the oft watched Crystal Castles a miss and check out CocknBullKid again, and despite the small crowd Anita Blay delivers another faultless set, and is a joy to listen to.

There's just time to get a beer before a feather headdressed P J Harvey takes to the stage, to showcase songs from her dark Mercury winning 'Let England Shake' album, alongside a few choice older tracks. It's a terrific spine tingling brooding set that's majestic in its execution, feeling more like a set from a folk legend than a pop star. The Dorset singer dressed head to foot in black is minimally lit on the vast cavernous stage also threw in a few songs from her back catalogue, and she keeps the crowd's attention throughout the set. The warm evening and soft breezes only add to the magical atmosphere - captivating!

There's just time to dash up to see Ed Sheeran take to the stage, but the crowd makes me rethink and I return to the main stage. I do like the fact that Bestival offers DJ sets between the acts on the major stages, and after Zane Lowe's shocking introduction to Pendulum last night where he seemed to be playing spot the intro, Rob da Bank shows him how it should be done, building the crowd to a frenzy before the headliners appear.

The Cure play their only European show of the year at Bestival with a gimmick free 32-song set. Lasers, and backdrop graphics weren't needed to hold our attention as Robert Smith and co. delivered their old classics. The band's former keyboardist Roger O'Donnell was on stage too alongside lively bassist Simon Gallup and the skin perfect driving beats of Jason Cooper.

Around me in the crowd was an audience of all ages, and from all over Europe, one Robert Smith alike had come from Holland just to savour this moment. Throughout singing along to their songs, my brain just kept returning to one point, "F**kin' 'ell, it's The Cure!" and it took until 'Friday I'm In Love' for the biggest crowd of the weekend to really realise this fact. The two and a half hours just flew by, where did the time go? As the full moon emerged from the skidding clouds to eventually deliver a star filled night sky.

As I'm a bit of a fan here's The Cure's setlist in full:

Plainsong, Open, Fascination Street, A Night Like This, The End of the World, Lovesong, Just Like Heaven, The Only One, The Walk, Push, Friday I'm In Love, In Between Days, Play For Today, A Forest, Primary, Shake Dog Shake, The Hungry Ghost, One Hundred Years, End, Disintegration.

Encore: Lullaby, The Lovecats, The Caterpillar, Close to Me, Hot Hot Hot!, Let's Go to Bed, Why Can't I Be You?

Second encore: Boys Don't Cry, Jumping Someone Else's Train, Grinding Halt, Saturday Night, Killing An Arab

As they finished, Smith told us "We've run out of time, but you will see us again. I hope it doesn't rain, and I hope that you have a fucking good Sunday." what did Sunday matter now? We'd had one of the best Saturdays ever! My memory of the last time I saw them live at a festival was getting a little hazy, it was good to see them again, even without a helicopter landing mid-set this time.

The night's not over yet, up next was Primal Scream, who are having an odd night, not that much of the crowd notice, but Bobby Gillespie and the boys seem lacklustre, perhaps it's just as well this 'Screamadelica' in full tour is coming to an end, it's time for them to play something they're more into. The crowd lap it up, I go to find food, only to find that at 1am most of the nice food stalls have closed up for the night, so much for saving my money for a treat. I wander further away in search of a decent feed, eventually I give up and it's burger and chips for tea, which actually was quite tasty. Then heavy rain hit again, and by then my bed was nearer than the Scream so I head there to rest my weary legs.

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