Full House

Already July 20 and we’ve hardly had a summer. Unless, of course, you were in west London at House Festival, aka the most perfect media garden party ever. It was Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts and sunshine ahoy at the coming together of houses Soho, Electric and Shoreditch for grilled lobster, champers, Cath Kidston (in the flesh) and low-cal MOR pop from Sophie Ellis-Bextor, among others. But what of our host, Soho House owner Nick Jones? Was he eating cupcakes with Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen?

Or throwing Freddie Mercury moves (“I wanna make a supersonic man outta you!”)? I prayed he wasn’t grafting too hard. I saw a tanned man gnaw on a lobster claw while shouting into his Blackberry, “I keep tellin’ ya, I’m workin’ ”, but I don’t think that was him.

The green dance machine

Does hedonism begin and end with too many V&Ts, followed by passing out in all the wrong places — or can it be harnessed for the greater good? A club in King’s Cross brings the prospect of redemption to hopeless wasters. Surya boasts a power-generating dancefloor, a rigid eco manifesto and the support of the queen of party girls, Jade Jagger (far left). “Jade is on the same page as us,” said the club’s owner, Dr Earth, gesturing at Jade, who was shimmying in the corner. And the other funseekers? “Oh, I feel very ecofriendly,” said a “lady” (left) I met in the loos. “Although, obviously, I got a taxi here.”

On the hop

Stars rise, stars fall, but surely celebrity beauty routines stay (fundamentally) the same? Not so if you’re Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie, whose dressing room at Vince Power’s Hop Farm festival in Kent was reportedly stocked with a most un-rock-starly quantity of make-up. Outside, in the mud, his old Primrose Hill mucker, Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, had his own elixir of youth in the company of his wife, Pearl Lowe (top, with Daisy), and kids, Daisy, Alfie, Frankie and little Betty. When Supergrass (above) finished their set with Alright, Daisy’s mate said to her, “Thank God your dad’s in a cool band, not a rubbish one, eh?” Daisy, of course, agreed wholeheartedly.

Free speech

To Bristol, arguably the loveliest city in the mild west. Briz has gone posh in recent years — even Harvey Nicks is arriving soon. Not posh enough, however, to stop the annual St Paul’s carnival being the usual glorious smorgasbord of crusties, pikeys, rude boys — and eco-dads, one of whom I saw push a Quinny up to a jerk-chicken stand manned by a rasta. “Is your chicken free-range?” asked Eco-dad, staring at 100-plus fiery chicken portions sizzling away. The rasta looked at him long and hard before replying levelly: “Yes.”

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