Neighbourhood Weekender day one roundup: Sugababes and Paul Heaton

Arriving at the Victoria Park grounds in the baking heat was full of familiar sites, with bucket hat sellers stationed every 50 metres in the walk down to the tents, and every pub along the walk full to the brim of festivalgoers loading up to avoid paying £6.50 a pint.

The first realisation was one of dread, as I realised the official Weekender app I had been planning to rely on for checking times and stages was reliant on WiFi.

In a festival setting where it’s near impossible to send a text let alone connect to WiFi, this left my scrambling all day to load my own article and bring up the stage times for acts I wanted to find.

Eventually I managed – downloaded the set times for the acts I wanted – and got to wandering the site.

The crowd was raucous all day, with almost every patch of ground covered across the entire site by bucket hats and burnt faces.

After arriving I went to the VIP section that our press passes allowed us entry to, and was vaguely underwhelmed.

Whilst queues were thankfully shorter, there were still long waits for food and drinks, with only the most expensive options for both available.

I recognise this is the most first world of first world problem, but £6.90 a pint of Moretti is grounds for a riot in my opinion.

After circling enough to feel like coming hadn’t been a waste of time, I went to watch arguably my biggest surprise of the day – Sugababes.

Occupying a spot towards the middle of the day on the main stage, with acts such as these who are past their point of peak popularity, you never really know what to expect.

They had the crowd absolutely bouncing however, as the hits were rolling and the girl group were brilliant.

After this I decided to explore the smaller stages, hoping to find some gems and lesser known acts.

On the way there I saw arguably the most impressive feat I’ve seen in years – with one man walking past managing to throw up without breaking stride or pausing his conversation with his friend.

After about four hours curled up in a ball coming to terms with what I’d just seen, I caught Stanleys on the Viola Beach stage.

One of my top picks for acts to look out for before the weekend, they absolutely didn’t disappoint.

The smaller stage had been fairly dead all morning, but with a mixture of friends brought over from their home town of Wigan and walkers by hearing their sound and wandering over, the crowd grew as their set went on.

Playing a mix of their outstanding bops such as ‘Why Would I’ and unreleased music that is sure to go down well with Indie fans, they were my highlight of the day.

After watching them I also had my favourite moment of the day at the Viola stage for a following set, witnessing a man ask for a girl’s number in the crowd only for her to point on stage and go “that’s my boyfriend sorry.”

The awkwardness was too much to bear so I went back over to the main stage via a small detour to the Big Top.

Playing out the end of the night on the main stage was The Kooks, self-aware enough to promise not to play too much of their new music, and Paul Heaton, joined by guest singer Rianne Downey.

Whilst Rianne and Paul played a great set, you could feel a slight disappointment in the crowd that Jacqui Abbott hadn’t bene able to perform. Whilst this is not a criticism of Rianne whatsoever, her absence was noticeable in the crowd.

With that set finished, it was time to head home, as the festival grounds emptied onto the streets of Warrington, ready to go home and prepare to head out again today for the final day of Neighbourhood Weekender 2023.