Thirty years on, the Radio 1 Fun Day has expanded into a fun Weekend, with four stages, but zany spirit is still at its elbow. How to pay attention to the Hoosiers' winsome soft rock - a big ask at the best of times - when they have been joined on stage by Jo Whiley, dressed in a banana costume? Some Radio 1 personalities' sacrifices extend far beyond donning fancy dress: "6.30pm Kelly Osbourne explodes!" promises the sign outside the Headroom Tent. How can Scouting For Girls - more soft rock - compete when they're detonating the Prince Of Darkness's daughter a few yards away? It turns out that Kelly Osbourne is exploder rather than explodee, blowing up a giant "love bomb", but it's still got the edge on Scouting For Girls, who appear to have been assembled in a sterile environment, like a specimen container.
Nevertheless, this event has lured Madonna to perform in the shadow of Maidstone Leisure Centre, a state of affairs that - with the greatest respect to the Garden of England's country town - feels not unlike running into Brad Pitt outside Dunstable Asda. Arriving on stage in a glittering throne, a dancer polishing her dominatrix boots, Madonna's star quality is transcendent. Designed to shill her new album, the six-song set is heavy on its slightly disappointing contents. Miles Away is thrown into stark relief when she performs the title track of 2000's Music. It also features a lot of Madonna's guitar playing, for which the adjective "dogged" might have been invented: if your neighbour's teenage son played the riff from the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction like that, you'd bang on the wall.
But none of this really matters. She oozes charisma and does spectacular dance routines, the sense of bizarre occasion compounded by the fact that at the rear of the tent lurks the mayor of Maidstone, resplendent in his official bling. "We're gonna have to start fucking it up!" Madonna squawks before launching into Hung Up, devoid of decorum even in such worshipful company. Unfazed, the mayor of Maidstone claps happily along.
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