Stage: Carling stage, Reading
Time: Friday, 6.25pm
Dress code: The Yorkshire reverend, Jon McClure, was a less emaciated Richard Ashcroft in aviator shades, leather jacket and curly mop. The Makers looked like shaggy northern blokes on a stag night.
In summary: Arctic Monkeys mentor McClure puts on a show of self-confidence that makes the cocksure, swaggering Johnny Borrell look like Woody Allen. He turned his mike lead into a gun, pow-powing the audience, and shadow-boxed during the instrumentals like Ali before the rumble in the jungle. In between songs, he spewed out poetry that could well have come straight from the crib sheet of his hero, John Cooper Clarke. The band's intelligent funk-punk was like the best Ian Brown solo stuff, but with more intelligible vocals.
Better than: Anything the Stone Roses did after their first album.
Worse than: Seeing the Stone Roses for those brief few months when they were really as good as everyone says they were.
Talking point: The shadow boxing.
Highlight: Heavyweight Champion of the World. Everyone in the tent had their hands in the air, singing in union the chorus, "Just be like everybody else." Fitting.
Mark out of ten: 8
What they'll be up to this time next year: Main stage, late afternoon, geeing the crowd up for the biggies.
