Isle of Wight Festival organiser John Giddings admits he’s had a few sleepless nights since this year’s music showpiece at Seaclose Park, Newport, came to a magnificent climax.
Isle of Wight Festival organiser John Giddings admits he’s had a few sleepless nights since this year’s music showpiece at Seaclose Park, Newport, came to a magnificent climax.
An awesome Main Stage line-up of James Bay, Nial Horan, Blondie and Robbie Williams on the final night, brought proceedings to a close in front of a capacity crowd of 50,000. John was delighted with this year’s Festival, but admitted with a smile: “Of course I’ve had some sleepless nights trying to work out how I can better it, and at the moment I have no clue what I am going to do. Perhaps I should just give up and retire!
“But seriously, we will provide another Festival full of entertainment in 2024. In fact, the Early Bird tickets for next year were going so quickly we had to stop selling them, because we had virtually sold out”.
John was particularly delighted with the two-hour set of Robbie Williams, saying: “He was absolutely amazing. He phoned me the following day, thanking me and saying it was an incredible night. There is something about playing on the Isle of Wight that puts people in a good mood, and leads to great shows. For me The Festival was a fantastic result. There was a great crowd, we sold all the tickets and everyone enjoyed themselves, so onwards and upwards. I would like to say a special ‘big thank you’ to the people from the Isle of Wight, who gave us so much support.”
John also revealed that he had already made offers to artists for next year even before this year’s Festival took place. But he added: “It would be stupid to name who I have been in touch with, because that just tempts fate. All I will say is, watch this space!”