Reading Roars!

The festival has ended and the 12 month wait for the next Reading extravaganza begins once more. So what happened?

• contactmusic.com reports that Mike Skinner of The Streets serenaded a random brunette in the crowd and successfully persuaded her to bare her breasts to the audience
• contactmusic.com also comments that Jack White of The Raconteurs chucked water at the front row of fans (ooh, very rock n’ roll), after they threw cups of beer on to the stage
• Peaches Geldof was very keen on Towers of London’s Donny Tourette, according to the Sunday Mirror
• Muse gave an explosive performance, say virgin.net and BBC News, while sesli chat kuryeNME reveals that Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner was taken aback by the size of the Reading crowd and questioned whether anyone had seen them perform last year at Reading
• The Arctic Monkeys, adds The Sun, gave Kelly Osbourne “some hot tips” before her set, but Jamie Cook was thrown out of the Carling VIP tent for trying to his friends in, The People unveils

It’s Reading Festival weekend and this year it looks serious. Seriously big, that is, for 250,000 people are expected to make their way to the festival site (quite remarkable as the town’s population is 144,000). Amazingly, all tickets earlier in the year were sold out in one hour, breaking records.

The Evening Post has described the music event as the most significant in the country:

With Glastonbury taking a break this year, the Richfield Avenue extravaganza is unarguably the biggest music attraction in the UK.

The Guardian has also got excited about Reading, praising the festival in its Leader column.

But is bigger…better?

Organisers are concerned that things might just get out of hand. Drunken idiocy is now a national sport played in town centres across the land, and it is feared that scenes of disorder might erupt out of a potent mix of teens, booze, drugs and provocative music.

Now, anyone making a nuisance this year may, for the first time ever, receive a so-called festival Asbo. I think that the festival Asbo should be extended to those over-enthusiastic about Christmas (drunk and sober people alike), but that’s a debate for another day.

Now, I don’t have a festival ticket, but I can listen to the music from my flat. Yes, I know, I know, it’s not the same. Or I can just make my way to the town’s bars - the Purple Turtle is always an exciting place to be when the festivalgoers roll in. But if there are any readers out there who are going, send me a picture or two (they don’t have to be too tasteful; far better to capture the true essence of the event) and I will put them on this blog!

Mentions of Reading FC have soared recently in national newspapers, thanks to the club’s ascendancy to domestic football’s top flight.

In Friday’s edition of The Guardian, an interview with Reading keeper Marcus Hahnemann was published in which he “declares his love for motorbikes, hamburgers and heavy metal”. Read what the Premiership star had to say sesli chat kuryehere.

Reading Roars! has had its first birthday.  So what lies ahead?

Expect to see more whitterings about Reading FC and their bid for Premiership glory.  Expect to see a podcast in the near future.  And a guest writer.  I’m sure you will want to see  more pics, so I will provide them too.  That’s enough promises for now.

No, I don’t understand it either. Reading Roars! is back. And it’s roaring louder than ever before. Ahem. A full explanation will be provided later.

For now, did you know that Reading Roars! is now a year (and a month) old?

Over the course of 12 months, the blog has undergone a number of facelifts and resurrections from the dead. It has also received visits from a cool 67 countries!

And here are those countries:

UK, Germany, Poland, Spain, Malaysia, Saudia Arabia, France, China, Costa Rica, Italy, Taiwan, Colombia, Japan, Netherlands, Seychelles, Israel, Singapore, Argentina, US, Canada, Venezuela, Russia, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, NZ, Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, Yugoslavia (huh?), India, Thailand, Denmark, Romania, Guatemala, Brazil, Greece, Turkey, Sweden, Lithuania, Switzerland, Vietnam, Finland, Ireland, Austria, Portugal, Iceland, South Africa, Croatia, New Caledonia, Kuwait, Morocco, Uruguay, Slovenia, Cocos Islands, Jordan, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Estonia, Luxembourg, South Korea, Slovakia and Egypt.

Thank you, people of the world! You all get a special Reading Roars! badge, as a mark of my appreciation. Ok, you don’t really. But cheers all the same. Now I will fill those gaps where previously content never existed…