Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common
Tuesday 25th of July and the piece of Clapham Common behind Rookery Road was just a patch of grass.
Four incredibly hot and sweaty days later it had been transformed into the extravaganza that is Ben & Jerry’s Sundae.
The festival was born last year, a one day event with a sold-out-in-6-hours capacity crowd of 5000.
This year it has evolved into a two day spectacular, similar to last year but bigger. The 7500 tickets for each day were again sold out in hours. Not really surprising when you look at what’s on offer: fantastic line up of bands (Jose Gonzalez, Badly Drawn Boy, the Wonder Stuff, Echo and the Bunnymen, Captain and Larrikin Love amongst others), a helter skelter, toe wrestling, Vauxhall City Farm complete with duck racing and ferrets, Mystic Moo the psychic cow, decorate your own cow biscuits, huge bars, some of the best festival food you’ll ever eat…..the list is endless. Top of the heap, the headliner, the daddy of the whole event is the free ice cream, all 16 flavours of Ben & Jerry’s are here and FREE.
Life doesn’t get much better.
The weatherman had been predicting rain for weeks, even on the morning of both days of the event. Thank bejesus he was wrong, it never materialised, the weather was perfect.
To top it all, this year Jerry Greenfield was there, the man himself. No pressure there then! They’ve been doing a similar event in the states for 15 years, Jerry’s been there, seen it and got the Phish Food stained T-shirt to prove it. We thought he might be a jaded and hard to impress. We couldn’t have been more wrong, he was full of energy and had a child-like enthusiasm for everything, especially the bands.
Highlights of the weekend included the whole crowd singing Happy Birthday to Miles Hunt of the Wonder Stuff, one of the pantomime cows that patrol the site getting stuck on the helter skelter, the crowd (again) chanting ‘Jerry, Jerry…’ Springer style, the Pipettes trying to nick our lovely deck chairs (very rock and roll), the Fairtrade banana men getting chased by a hungry looking Chunky Monkey, Jerry serving ice cream to surprised looking customers, the security staff proving their worth by catching a ticket thief and keeping out an endless stream of invading R*d B*ll samplers, the giant balloons escaping the arena confines and making a break for it onto the Common, the Wonder Stuff/Captain “I love you”…”no, I love you more” mutual admiration society, more than 100,000 scoops of ice cream being served……it was all good.
We left the site on Sunday night, knackered but elated.
2007, coom on!
http://www.benjerry.co.uk/sundae
