The vision of half a dozen St Etienne fans waving Foxbase Alpha placards near the stage of the Obelisk arena confuses at first, until some sympathetic soul obviously whispers in their ear that they’re at the wrong part of the site, and they embarrassingly shuffle off towards the Uncut arena. For this is the hour of Editors, who may employ similar synth-like keyboards to Bob Stanley’s crew, but for less summery purposes. There’s a moody serious to Editors, as they emerge almost unnoticed, their dark clothing disappearing into the barely lit stage, like GQ makeover goth camouflage. With scant verbal acknowledgement of the crowd throughout, Tom Smith leads the band through a series of staccato twisted anthems that can’t help but recall the likes of Joy Division or a particularly grumpy incarnation of Echo and the Bunnymen. Smith’s vocals have previously (and frequently) drawn comparisons with Ian Curtis’s but his style seems more mannered, contrived even, and they’re ultimately the culprit of the group’s downfall. The crowd receive them with enthusiasm, but there’s little in the way of specialness in Editors’ music; it’s powerful, expertly-played, but lacks that unidentifiable spark to project them onto a higher plain than any one of a dozen bands who’ve climbed the same ladder at the same pace over the last five years. A third album, In This Light And On This Evening, is due in September, but tonight’s set concentrates on its two predecessors. “Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors” manages to stand out, the lyric suggesting a humanity and insight that’s hard to come by across the rest of their cookie-cutter indie rock selections. TERRY STAUNTON

Latitude closed tonight with headline sets from two of America’s greatest dance bands. Fresh off a flight from Berlin, !!! wind up proceedings on the Sunrise Stage with an wild, sweaty set under canvas that sees this New York dance troupe playing to their strengths. Received wisdom has it that this is a band firmly in the NYC disco/post-punk tradition, but really there’s as much Sandinista-era Clash and Happy Mondays to these tight basslines, scratchy guitar dissonance and loping baggy grooves. Certainly, frontman Nic Offer is as much a Bez as a James Murphy, an endearing goof who exists as much to keep the crowd writhing as to dispense anything meaningful on the microphone. And while this means that !!! may not have the studied cool of hometown buddies The Rapture or LCD Soundsystem, I’m pretty sure neither of those bands have quite the goofy good humour to inspire an impromptu conga line. Then finally, it’s back down to the Uncut Stage for a climactic set from the Gossip. They keep us waiting, an interminable soundcheck delaying onstage time by a good 20 minutes – although that very few shift to check out a very audible Nick Cave on the adjacent Obelisk Stage says a lot about the Ditto appeal. And then, she’s here, scarily glamorous in styled up black hair and pink polka-dot dress: “Do you have an attitude, Latitude?” The set mixes up material like "2012" and "Heavy Cross" from the band's synthier, disco-tinged new Rick Rubin-produced album Music For Men with older, rawer numbers like "Listen Up!", but really, this show will be memorable for Ditto's game attempts to close the gap between band and audience. Hauling kids over the barrier, commanding security to "Let them dance!", before long the photo pit is a sea of bodies, bodies that one by one bound up on stage (although Ditto can't get anyone to have a go on the microphone - still, given the competition, can you blame them?). They wind up, of course, with a rabid take on "Standing In The Way Of Control" and an impromptu a capella burst of Queen's "We Are The Champions" in honour of those booted off the stage. Justly deserved, but it's hard not to consider Beth's declaration that this will be their "last UK show in a while". Certainly, their absence will leave a distinctly Ditto-shaped hole - and it's hard to think of who's out there who can fill it. LOUIS PATTISON

To the UNCUT Arena, then, and the Vaselines and St Etienne. Two bands who, although wildly different in sound and execution both, astonishingly, emerged from the same kind of cultural environment. I’m talking, of course, about C86. Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee formed the Vaselines in Glasgow in that year, and were part of the Glasgow scene that also gave us the Shop Assistants, the Pastels, Primal Scream and any number of other bands to jingle a jangle with some nice hairgrip harmonies on the top. In a previous life, St Etienne’s Bob Stanley ran the Caff label and fanzine that was closely modelled around the Sarah label, another key piece of the C86 jigsaw. Indeed, St Etienne’s great, los,t second single, “Kiss And Make Up”, ticked a number of C86 friendly boxes, having been a cover of a song by Sarah band the Field Mice, while a version of it was in fact released by Sarah. Anyway, without wishing to get into the rather tedious forensic detail of all this, let’s talk a bit about the Vaselines’ set. This is, as you may know, one of a handful shows they’ve played since getting back together in April last year. Best known, perhaps, as one of Kurt Cobain’s favourite bands (his only daughter, Frances Bean, is named after McKee), they’re testament to the enduring brilliance of a lot of these C86 songs – a movement criminally overlooked, it strikes me, but in fact hugely under acknowledged for its importance on the development of the UK indie scene. So, “Molly’s Lips”, “Son Of A Gun” and “Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam” are blessed with a simple, beautiful pop sheen. Kelly might whip up a quite impressive noise on his guitar, but his and McKee’s unerring ear for melody is unavoidable. No song, incidentally, seems to last for more that 2 minutes 30 seconds, which is further evidence of the band’s astonishing song writing skills. Entertainingly, for a band so associated with a specific tweeness, their between song banter is hilarious, and pretty foul mouthed. “American accents give me the horn,” says McKee. “Is there anyone here with an American accent? Oh, and it’s two things. It’s not just the accent, you’ve got to have a really big dick as well.” You can take the girl out of Glasgow, it seems, but you can’t take Glasgow out of the girl. Of course, this isn’t the kind of language you’d expect to hear from St Etienne’s Sarah Cracknell. As always, she exercises considerable, almost regal grace as she strolls on stage at the start of St Etienne’s set, dressed in what looks like a sharp black suit. It’s interesting to note, perhaps, how Kelly and McKee have mostly stayed within the original parameters of the C86 scene; yet Stanley, along with Cracknell and Pete Wiggs, too it in a completely different direction. In a way, I suppose, it’s a similar trajectory to Primal Scream, who also evolved beyond their C86 origins to embrace dance music. In fact, St Etienne provide Latitude with a much-needed injection of pop fun. There is a heavy reliance on their brilliant debut, Foxbase Alpha, so we get “Nothing Can Stop Us”, “Spring” and a storming, bass-heavy version of “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” that has the rammed UNCUT Arena bouncing with collective joy. The latest single, “Method Of Modern Love”, is clearly indebted to Kylie Ann Minogue OBE’s “The One”, but we shall let that pass – after all, Kylie did cover “Nothing Can Stop Us” once. And, one day, I’d love to hear "When Are You Coming Home?", the unreleased Kylie/St Etienne collaboration from the 1994 Kylie Minogue album sessions. In fact, it’s interesting to see the way St Etienne developed beyond their Balearic origins, as evidenced here by “Burned Out Car” and “He’s On The Phone”, which are both pumping Euro pop House numbers. A great version of slow-motion techno “Like A Motorway” works for me. Anyway, Nick Cave’s on in a minute, and I fancy buying some artisan cheese. That’s all from me this year – Allan’s down the front for Magazine, I hope, Louis should be blogging about Gossip and then Terry’ll be wrapping things up with his Cave blog later. I hope you’re enjoyed reading our witterings! Cheers.

I’d been telling anyone who’d listen over the last few weeks and more in the build-up to Latitude that New Jersey’s The Gaslight Anthem in the right circumstances might be the surprise hit of the festival, especially after headline-grabbing sets at Glastonbury and Hyde Park, where they were joined onstage by Bruce Springsteen, who in turn had Anthem frontman Brian Fallon share the spotlight with him and the E Street Band on “No Surrender”. I’d imagined Gaslight Anthem coming on against a nuclear sunset, the sky aflame and an audience blown away, the next 45 minutes talked about by many for years to come. Of course, it doesn’t happen according to my pre-written script. It’s absolutely bucketing down when they come on. There’s basically only me and my friend Helen and a few score hardcore fans in front of the stage, most of them hooded against the rain and looking like members of a sinister religious cult or the roadies on Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps tour and things frankly don’t look all that promising in terms of the moment of festival transcendence I’ve been cheerfully predicting. Then they kick into “High Lonesome” from break-out album The '59 Sound and things start to brighten, the sense of a moment being seized about to be taken and already there are more people around us that there were a couple of minutes ago, people as they will always be drawn to the sound of great music, which is what we are listening to. The Gaslight Anthem, broadly speaking, share the same mythographical universe as The Hold Steady, a world in which rock’n’roll as played by the people who believe like they do that it can heal the most wounded and forlorn among us will save the fucking day. Their musical template is as thankfully as uncomplicated as their faith in the noise we love, lots of Springtsteen and as much Clash, London Calling as much an influence as Born To Run. Which makes for an increasingly inflammatory set, “Casanova Baby!” now drawing even more people into the Obelisk Arena, the place filling up like a pub at closing time, the bell about to go and everyone thirsty for more. “He’s got a great voice for a little fellah,” Helen, who’s never heard them before, tells me half way through the next number, “Old White Lincoln”, whose chorus the growing crowd are now tempted with some gusto to sing along with, even though I doubt many of them have heard it before. And so it goes, song after song, as unfamiliar as each may be to the many more people who by the moment who are joining us, making the world by the minute a better place to be, “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” now blowing the clouds away, the sun coming out, Helen dancing, and everyone else too, the joint, as it were, jumping, and no one wanting this to come too quickly to an end, even as that that end is looming, the band now playing a version of “Great Expectations” you know is setting up a roaring climax that comes with a sweeping “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” and the great “The Backseat”. Allan Jones

Unfortunately, the Uncut Arena is running late, so we only manage to see a sliver of Tricky's set before we have to dash off to see some other acts - we can definitely confirm it was pretty bonkers, as you'd expect from trip-hop's most eccentric talent. He begins with an instrumental version of Eurythmics' 'Sweet Dreams' which, with its buzzy synth-bass, clattering percussion and pummelling backbeat, sounds somewhat like Nine Inch Nails. Next up is a typically trip-hop number with tinkling cocktail-bar piano and menacing backing vocalists, followed by a deathly slow song featuring sparse drum hits and grainy synth chords. A pretty heavy, doomy set, then, but we're forced to rush over to the main stage to catch some of Phoenix. The French fashionistas are first and foremost a party band and it suits this evening perfectly - the sun's come out and the rain seems to have stopped for good. Pushing their synths, drum loops and keyboards to the background, the group, led by Thomas Mars, pin much more of their sound tonight on fuzz bass and taut, sharp guitars. Along with their preppy, elegant sartortial style, you could almost be watching a parallel-universe Strokes. 'Lisztomania', the opener on their new album 'Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix', kicks off the set, before they break into older, and no less infectious, material like 'Run'. It's all a bit of a glorious sugar rush - you may not take away much to dwell on from Phoenix's set, but you'll know you had a damn good time. TOM PINNOCK

As the sky threatens to rain, we head into the safety of the Uncut tent to see Alela Diane. The American singer-songwriter, joined by a four-piece band, including a subtle backing singer, performs her woozy country-tinged songs to a good-sized crowd. Her voice is a very fluid instrument, picking up the slack where the songwriting may not be memorable enough - her pronunciation of 'canyon' alone on one song is enough to sustain attention for the whole track. 'White As Diamonds' gets a big cheer from the crowd, but it's the tribal, meditative closer 'The Ocean' that really hints at the more interesting avenues Diane could pursue in the future. The rain's coming down thick and fast, so the tent fills up to bursting point - a good bit of fortune for Aboriginal singer Gurrumul, up next. Backed by a string quartet, double bassist and classical guitarist, the blind singer's tracks are a little bit too 'Pan Pipe Moods' - if it wasn't for his voice, that is. Soaring over the (far too) tasteful strings and folk-derived guitar picking, Gurrumul's voice is a tremulous wonder, stretching from guttural rumbles to almost unnerving animal-like cries. It's a moving performance. Perhaps Gurrumul's putting in all his reserves today because (as his double bassist says) the monsoon-like conditions remind him of home. An act who don't quite get the same comfort from the rain are The Rumble Strips. Out on the main Obelisk Arena stage, they start their set with only a small crowd due to the harsh weather. The sun begins to peek out, though, as they continue and the audience swells. Their earlier material features their best songs, for example, 'Girls And Boys In Love', but it's their newer, Mark Ronson-produced work that impresses most live, due to the fuller instrumentation and more reliance on keyboards and strings than horns. As much as they deny it, there's a real Dexys feel to their music - in the sprightly rhythms and Charlie Waller's sonorous, soulful voice - and it's both their strength and their weakness. As the sun comes out during 'Motorcycle', though, Latitude's loving it. TOM PINNOCK

Just got back from Wild Beasts at the Obelisk Arena and it’s started tipping it down. After yesterday’s broadly sunny, hot weather, the heavens have clearly decided enough is enough. Still, without wishing to turn this into a Met Office update, let’s just say that the sun stayed out long enough to let us enjoy Wild Beasts. I was certainly quite taken with singer/guitarist Hayden Thorpe’s rather striking mullet and cut-off demin jacket. If anything, it serves to locate them even more intrinsically in an era – the Eighties – with which they clearly have an affinity. The reference points, specifically, are The Associates (particularly Thorpe’s stunning falsetto), Orange Juice and The Smiths. But, particularly when they play songs from their new album, Two Dancers, you could be forgiven for detecting, for instance, the lush grandeur of late period Roxy Music. Thorpe is happy to remind us that this is their third year at Latitude – I can’t off the top of my head think of any band who can make such a claim, so well done chaps. “We started off as young men, playing in the woods,” he says, before they graduated to the UNCUT Arena last year and now, “we’ve come of age” on the main stage. There’s certainly plenty to enjoy here. The nimble interplay between Thorpe’s and Ben Little’s guitars is a joy; tremendous, life-affirming melodies swooping and swooning in the rolling Suffolk countryside. And, while admittedly they might not have drawn the biggest crowd of the day, everyone is clearly enjoying their set. Anyway, I’m going to try and find a tent to keep dry in. I’ve been slightly slack this year in terms of seeing as much comedy as I’d like, so I’m going to see who’s on there. Hopefully, the rain might stop in time for The Vaselines and St Etienne in the UNCUT Arena later. Pic credit: Richard Johnson

One of the highlights of Saturday was undoubtedly Jeffrey Lewis, New York anti-folk hero, poet, comic book artist and general raconteur. He took awkwardly to the small Poetry Tent stage at about half 12 at night, and announced he was going to take the informal setting as a chance to debut a number of new songs. "These songs haven't really been performed before, and they might not ever be again," he said in his nasal drawl. We really hope they are, though - perhaps, Lewis' funniest set of songs yet, the songs he debuted upped the tragi-comic stakes of his earlier material to a near ludicrous level. One of the most impressive tracks was a rapid-fire gangster rap parody about murdering mosquitos in his cabin in Maine, titled (we're guessing) 'Mosquito Mass Murderer'. After a number of very funny and morbid songs, Lewis decided to change tack, saying that people often think all his music is just about death and self-loathing: "So I'm going to sing about something different - this song's about suicide." The resulting macabre track was a hilarious and gruesome account of his (fictional, of course) attempts to kill himself, which included swallowing rat poison (then trying to get his cheque cancelled when he believes the poison hasn't worked), jumping off a bridge (before being contaminated with toxic waste from a passing river barge), and putting a chopstick to your chest and running towards a wall (how else can you off yourself when you're eating chinese food?). A twisted renaissance man and, undoubtedly, some kind of genius, then. TOM PINNOCK

A rare-as hen’s teeth solo set from Thom Yorke kicked off proceedings on the Obelisk Stage at midday. The Radiohead frontman performed a set on guitar and grand piano, drawing on tracks from his debut solo album, 2006’s Eraser, a handful of Radiohead tracks, and some lesser-known tracks, including one new composition and a few seldom-played gems and fan favourites Yorke described as “left on the shelf”. The side-of-stage screens were switched off, suggesting Yorke is still not entirely happy under the camera’s gaze, but that aside, he was avuncular and chatty, bantering about Grace Jones’ G-string – “Could I pull one of those off?” he asks, and going on the crowd response, well, maybe – expressing dismay he wasn’t playing down by the riverside, and at one point, simply beaming “I’m having a lovely time!” The Radiohead songs, like “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” and “Everything In Its Right Place”, were made possible with deft use of a loop pedal, Yorke playing quick snatches and then looping them back, filling out songs bit by bit. Eraser was represented by brooding, largely electronic cuts like “The Eraser” and the overlooked “Harrowdown Hill”, Yorke’s harrowing song about the death of Dr David Kelly, the former UN Weapons inspector who died in mysterious circumstances in 2003. The currently nameless new song, meanwhile, was debuted on acoustic guitar, Yorke singing about “self-defence against the present” atop spiralling arpeggios recalling the sophisticated guitar-work of In Rainbows. The crowd called him back for an encore, which culminated with a run through Radiohead’s great lost song, “True Love Waits”. Elsewhere this morning, author and journalist Jon Ronson continued the mood of conspiracy theory and middle-class ennui, reading from his book Them: Adventures With Extremists - currently being made into a film starring Ewan McGregor and George Clooney - and relating a few anecdotes from the writing of his new book, which apparently involves him interviewing psychopaths in Broadmoor. Somehow, he even managed to make this gently funny, but such is Latitude. LOUIS PATTISON

So Saturday's been and gone - but (in no particular order) here's the UNCUT team's top ten highlights of Latitude's second day... 1. Simon Armitage The most important poet since Andrew Motion, perhaps, but there's more - he's also got the personality and humour of a stand-up comedian and the obsession of the hardiest music fan. Perfect for Latitude. 2. Passion Pit Hyped-up electro troupe turned the Sunrise Stage into a euphoric rave with their Supertramp-meets-LCD Soundsystem pop thrills. 3. Camera Obscura A real classy turn on the Uncut Stage from the Scottish indie institution. As tuneful and witty but thankfully less fey than the likes of Belle & Sebastian, Tracyanne Campbell's voice was truly a thing of liquid beauty. 4. Spiritualised's noise ending You can't beat a good noise jam, and Jason Pierce's gang didn't disappoint, summoning a skronking five-minute noise coda of shrieking guitars and beaten organ at the end of their Uncut Stage headline set. 5. Grace Jones A typically mental set from the legend, including asking if she was on the moon. 6. Jeffrey Lewis New York's punk-folk poet showcased a bunch of never-before-played new songs in the Poetry Tent on Saturday night. Death, suicide, self-loathing - but truly hilarious. 7. Marnie Stern The First Lady of guitar-tapping indie weirdness was on good (and drunken) form on Saturday, rocking up her sound, talking about her private regions and generally being entrancingly wayward. 8. Doves A wonderful and deeply-textured set in the Obelisk Arena from the Manchester heroes. 9. Michael Jackson dance competition Grace Jones' aftershow in the Cabaret Tent saw a moonwalking contest in tribute to the late great. UNCUT thought we'd leave it to the experts, though... 10. A woman wearing a papier mache moose head Must we say more?

There's less of the pushchairs and families at this year’s Latitude, but the site seems busier than ever - enough people to give Broken Records a pretty large crowd on the main Obelisk Arena stage. The gently hyped band have been described as the Scottish Arcade Fire ad nauseum for a reason, and today’s set, well tailored for the main stage, is suitably epic. Using acoustic guitar and accordion in the same way the Canadian group use hurdy gurdy and violin, the band thunder along on tracks like ‘Nearly Home’, all bluster and brawn under Jamie Sutherland’s histrionic voice. Undeniably powerful, but quite a lot to take in on a sunny afternoon. The Airborne Toxic Event don’t fare so well immediately after on the same stage. Another band using strings, this time alongside a more conventional rock backing, the group’s ultra-serious paeans of life’s darker sides, like single 'Gasoline', can come off as a little hammy. Much better is DM Stith (pictured above), who draws a disappointingly small crowd to the Sunrise Stage. Looking small and unassuming in a grey zip-up hoodie, Stith’s voice is a warbling, cutting holler, swooping between notes and bending vowels in its unique pronunciation. There’s no doubt the songs on his debut ‘Heavy Ghost’ are great, but it’s the arrangements which really impress – behind his sometimes scratchy but soft guitar playing, a violinist trills out complex ebbing lines like a whole quartet, while Stith’s drummer is almost like the folk equivalent of Can’s Jaki Liebezeit; forever moving and rolling without ever playing a standard beat. After the closing ‘Fire Of Birds’, performed solo by Stith with some spectral violin accompaniment, we head over to see The XX on the Lake Stage. The four-piece, lined up along the front of the small stage, seem a little nervous, though – perhaps at the thought of not playing in some hipster basement venue. Saying nothing to the audience, they run through their set of moody, almost shoegaze-y, electro faultlessly. Hand-triggered electronic drums create all the right taut beats, the guitars twinkle and echo just the right side of tentative and the soul and RnB-influenced vocals are equally sugary and sultry. The only problem is that every song is effectively exactly the same. While that never hurt The Ramones, AC/DC or Motorhead, etc. The XX have only limited stage presence to pull them through. Right, off to Spiritualised... Check back later for more dispatches from Latitude. TOM PINNOCK

They're at it again, those outdoor orators who bring their own brand of insight and wisdom to Latitude. Join us once more in a flurry of eaves-dropping... 1. "Some of the authors in the literature tent are looking a bit shell-shocked. They're way out of their Waterstones sherry and vol-au-vents comfort zone." 2. "You're lucky Clive was too drunk to hit you." 3. "I would imagine the quickest way to find out what he's up to next would be to click on to smugtwat.com" 4. "Steer clear of the pear cider. It's the Sunny D of alcohol." 5. "I want to avoid the girl in the big plastic bubble on the lake. I'm still having nightmares from last year." 6. "Have you seen that guy up on the scaffolding platform making sure nothing kicks off between the campers, like he's a lifeguard or something? Talk about Baywatch for crusties... 7. Toilet door graffiti: "Go home, dad." 8. "What is it with you and noodles? Seriously, have you no other topic of conversation in you at all?" 9. "Can someone please explain the whole Thom Yorke thing to me. People are talking about his little gig like it's the resurrection of Gandhi." 10. "I wouldn't expect you to buy me a drink at these prices, even if you were angling for a shag."

Watching Spiritualized headline the UNCUT Arena at the end of Latitude day two, with an astonishing set of heavy, psychedelic noise, I’m reminded of the first and the last time I saw Jason Pierce play live. I’m reminded of the first time, because as I pile enthusiastically into the UNCUT Arena, which is pitch dark, I start falling over people sitting on the floor. This is almost exactly what happened when I saw Spacemen 3 at what used to be London’s Town And Country Club, where I walked through a set of doors and fell straight over some bloke sitting on the floor – indeed, the entire audience were sitting down. A prone position, you might assume, being the best way to appreciate the medicated drones of Pierce’s first band. The last time I saw Pierce play was at Islington’s Union Chapel, at one of his Spiritualized Acoustic Mainline shows. There, he stripped his formidable back catalogue down to its basic components with quietly devastating effect. Tonight, he goes in the opposite direction. Accompanied by six other musicians, he basically turns up the volume and let everything hit you full on. It is, frankly, brilliant. Standing on the far stage right, wearing a pair of hefty shades, he barely moves throughout the set. Still, he manages to coax an impressively wide and frequently squally range of sounds from his guitars. We get the precise, plangent, echoey notes of “Walking With Jesus”, or a vicious, nightmarish wall of feedback on “Take Me To The Other Side”. It’s strange, perhaps, but when all is said and done about Pierce, I tend to think his talents as a musician are perhaps overlooked. His playing tonight, at least, is phenomenal. There’s a tremendous version of “Think I’m In Love”, beautiful drop bass lines and high-end spangly effects included. A joyous “Lay Back” that loops and grows and finally erupts into a burst of white noise. A fantastic “Come Together”, that similarly climaxes in a blistering whirl of feedback. I guess you could say, one of the key highlights of the weekend in the UNCUT Arena. Jason's an UNCUT hero. Spiritualized set list: Amazing Grace/You Lie You Cheat Shine A Light Cheapster Soul On Fire Walking With Jesus Think I'm In Love Lay Back Take Your Time Come Together Take Me To The Other Side

It's 20 minutes past the scheduled start-time for the main arena headliner, and our Saturday night diva has yet to emerge from behind the black curtain covering the front of the stage. Grace Jones, a woman whose concept of punctuality has traditionally been a little on the abstract side, may not yet have reached the level of fashionably late, but she's certainly crossed a line towards trendily tardy. But here she is now, majestically eyeing rain-soaked festival-goers from her vantage point of a raised platform that may well have been borrowed from the chaps who wash the outside windows of tall buildings, her deep drawl wrapping itself around the words of "Nightclubbing". It's pretty much a greatest hits set, with "My Jamaican Guy", "Demolition Man" and "Slave To The Rhythm" despatched with clinical efficiency, hardly veering (if at all) from their familiar recorded versions. Her recent Hurricane album features, but not excessively, and arguably the most entertaining aspects of the evening come when Grace decides to communicate directly with her fans between songs: "Wow! Wow! Wow! Wow! Wooooowwwww!!!! Am I on the moon?" (Quite possibly, love) "Give me something to suck on, please. I'm a little thirsty." "Oh, darling, a good conscience will kiss you as it bites you, you Portaloo sunset." "I don't know if you know this about me, but I like to dress up a bit." That last remark may well turn out to be the most phenomenal understatement in Latitude history. Never has a 61-year-old donned a pair of hot pants with such style and confidence, but it's the increasingly bizarre headgear that takes the breath away. Imagine Salvador Dali decreeing that everyone attending Ladies' Day at Royal Ascot has to buy their bonnets from the "especially bonkers" shelf of his haberdashers' store. Jones clearly isn't to everyone's taste musically, so it may not have been just the rain that had some of the crowd heading for the exits long before the end of her set. Those who stayed, though, witnessed a true one-off of a performer having a blast under a deep purple sky, pulling up to the bumper with outlandish glee. TERRY STAUNTON Pic credit: Richard Johnson