After meeting the band and crew at Heathrow Airport on Thursday, we headed straight to the Reading Fest site, with a couple of pit stops for Burger King and beer. Because our actual show day at Reading wasn’t until the next day, they weren’t ready for us to take the bus to the stage, so we were designated a spot in one of the car parks where coaches were dropping off festival-goers.

With less than nothing to do for the rest of the day, we headed to a pub round the corner and set up camp for the night. With R&L Festival being a more pop-focused festival, I didn’t expect the majority crowd to recognise the band, but as soon as Jaret walked in there were people wanting photos with the guys. On top of that, the manager of the pub was a huge BFS fan, as were a number of the bar staff. In exchange for a photo of the band and staff together behind the bar, the guys were given star treatment, including Rob and Gary getting to pour their own pints of Guinness (with guidance from the experts).

After seeing it through until closing time at the pub, we headed back to the bus to drink all the beers. Then at 1am, having previously only seen the blessings of their findings, the guys found the cursed side of JustEat delivering mediocre fried goods to you at all hours of the night when we drunkenly ordered pizza and fried chicken to the bus. It should be illegal to be that easy to order food while drink. Around 1:30 I desperately needed by bed, but the food still hadn’t arrived yet, so I gave Jaret my phone and in a sort of Hollywood drama style way told him that someone will call him soon and that he should do exactly what they tell him and he’ll be rewarded. Then I headed to bed.

A cool thing about this short run is that my girlfriend was able to join us for the ride. We had a packed bus this time around so Aisha and I shared a bunk. As I’ve talked about on these blogs before, the bunks are very small, made for almost one whole person. Knowing what we were in for, I made sure to grab a suicide bunk when we got on the bus. The suicide bunks are the two bunks that run horizontally along the very front of the bus, named as such because if the bus was to crash, your bunks take the full force of the crash. Other than that horrifying element, they’re a little bit wider and I much prefer them. One of the things about sharing a bunk is that as well as sharing your mattress, pillow and quilt, you’re also sharing your plug socket. Thankfully, in 2019, we were just about able to fit everything in that we needed.

I woke up just before 11am on the Friday sweating out a hangover and had to immediately get out of my bunk to enjoy the air conditioning downstairs, lest I melt away and never return from the tour. At that point, we were still in the car park from the previous night, so with no possibility of having to do any work, Aisha and I headed into the town centre for breakfast. Every single pub, shop, restaurant was packed full of people preparing for the festival, so we had to walk a little further to find somewhere without a huge line. I was pretty impressed when we found a pub doing all day breakfasts and we both got our food and a glass of orange juice each for a total of £7.95, then the food arrived and I realised why it was so cheap. I still ate it, because this is tour and you pretty much get what you’re given in situations like this.

After struggling through breakfast we headed back to the bus just in time for us to drive into the festival grounds and park up behind our stage. I don’t think it will ever stop being impressive watching our driver bay park our double decker tour bus with a trailer on the back. We slotted in directly between Patent Pending and The Maine’s busses for the day. I went for a quick walk around the festival and confirmed that the set up was as I expected; there were some portable toilets, some portable showers and a hot portacabin dressing room with a couple of two-seater couches. We had to wait until around 8pm before the temperature was low enough that we could even sit in there.

One of the things I do love about working festivals is the artist catering is usually badass compared to most English food. Aisha and I set off on the hot walk towards main stage to find the catering tent and passed the Patent Pending gang on the way, who seemed pretty excited about the quality of food, so that was a good sign. Although difficult to find, when we got there, the food looked great. Unfortunately, the catering tent was seemingly the hottest place in the entire festival ground and for some reason they had no cold drinks available at all. So despite the fact it was accompanied by lukewarm water, I got to eat a medium-rare steak with mac and cheese and a red velvet cake in the middle of a god damn festival and it was great. In my Mum’s words, “A shallot. A shallot at a fucking festival.”

I got to experience another first at this festival when me and Dave got driven to the festival boundary on a buggie so we could go to a Tesco. If I’m honest, being on the back of one of those things was a little bit terrifying and I thought I was going to fall off the whole time, but I felt super important.

It’s all fun and games but eventually I have to do some of what we call “work” on these tours, which means starting drinking in preparation for the show. After a few beers it was time to head to the stage for a rock show. The tent we played in was packed out past the doors and the crowd was super excited. It was clear to see that despite this being Soup’s first return to Reading Festival in 16 years, the love for them was still present.

The guys had a 60 minute set, which only gives them enough time to play hits, so we watched BFS power through all the fan-favourites, while off in the distance, I could see The 1975 play on the big screen of the main stage, demonstrating how the landscape of the music industry has changed a lot in the last 15 years but the thousands of fans packing out our tent while one of the biggest pop bands in the world plays just minutes away shows that rock music isn’t dead, despite what some news outlets are currently trying to tell you following these festivals.

After the show we did what we do best and headed to the dressing room to drink all the alcohol. Similar to other festivals, there was a somewhat communal atmosphere to the night, with our dressing room door open and Patent Pending and other guests in and out of the room to hang out. Around midnight, we moved the party to the bus, except Jaret who headed to Patent Pending’s bus, where I went to make sure that firstly, he didn’t get left behind and secondly, he didn’t run out of Delicious Gary. The Pending guys are great to drink with, because they love to excitedly yell details of a story over each other the whole night. I love those guys.

There was a 2am bus call and some time around 4:30am I headed to bed.

The morning of the Leeds show was shrouded with hangover and I don’t remember a great deal about it. The toilets in the artist area were nothing short of disgusting. Our bus was parked directly next to them and by early afternoon the smell was emanating out across the whole area. There were no showers this time around, which was a shame because I hadn’t showered at Reading thinking I’d be able to do it in Leeds. The dressing room was similar, but split into two rooms. One room had the fridge and a table, the other room had two couches and a weirdly out-of-place Persian rug. In this one, we didn’t have a fan, so the room was even hotter than the night before.

My Mum and Sister were also at Leeds Festival, so Aisha and I headed out into the festival grounds to meet them for a while. It was about 1pm by this point and the sun was baking us alive as we sat at a bench in the guest area. I briefly considered a cold beer to cool me down, but that thought was only fleeting when I remembered that we wouldn’t be on stage until almost 10pm and I would be unconscious by then if I started drinking at that time. At one point, Joe Ragosta walked past and I introduced him to my Sister. He asked her what it was like to have me as a brother and if it was cool. She said no. He told her in about 10 years she’ll appreciate it more.

After that, we headed to catering to see what was on offer today. The answer was another catering tent hotter than hell and no cold water or drinks of any kind. Aside from that, eating a fucking salmon fillet at a festival will never not be insane.

After eating, I headed back to our stage to watch Patent Pending’s slot. As always, it was full of energy and kicked ass. Watching from the back of the stage really shows you how loud Anthony drums. That guy can bang some pots, seriously. An element of the Leeds show that sucked is that, for acoustic reasons, there was a wall built around the outside of our tent, so finding it was pretty difficult. Patent Pending played to a half full tent, a much smaller crowd than the day before, but that never stopped them keeping the energy up. Shoutout to all the people who caught sweaty mid-show Joe.

During Soup’s show I was able to welcome Patent Pending to the on-stage bar and keep them hydrated throughout the night. It’s always fun to look after those guys on stage and let them drink all our beer and Delicious Garys. However, I think I need to teach Anthony about English currency though, because he’s always tipping me in 2p coins. In addition, my sister and Jack Reddick both joined us at the on-stage bar for Virgin Garys.

BFS had another packed out crowd in Leeds and the show was a blast. Everybody put their rock and roll hands in the air and everybody knew the words to this song. It was awesome to see the guys pull in a crowd like that at such a pop-oriented festival. Big shoutout to the girl on the front row who sang along to every single song even though she didn’t know the words to any of them. I see you!

The guys had to be back in Heathrow for an early morning flight home, so bus call was 12:30 that night. We got drunk for a little while in the dressing room and I hung out with the Patent Pending guys for a while, including a moment where Joe pointed to a picture of himself on my PP t-shirt and shouted, “Hey! It’s your god damn boy!”. I love that dumbass.

Huge thanks to everyone who contributed to making these short few days a kickass time! I’m so glad that nobody on these tours sucks too bad, it makes life way easier. There are some rumours floating around about when I’ll next see you all, maybe you should go look that up online.

No context quote of the day: “Because…England”