However let me state up front that I have a problem with the extent to which this is taken at times. Seeing the Lips last year in London it appeared strange to me that Wayne wished to hype the crowd up even more when they were clearly up for it in any case. Call me old fashioned but I like to see bands earn their receptions through their music rather than through artificial hype.

The Flaming Stripes take the stage

That remained a problem with some elements of this show. Simply put Wayne talks too much (often repeating things he’d said before the previous song) and the extended, drawn out singalong finales to "Yoshimi" and "Jelly" weren’t welcome to these ears. The festival setting may well be appropriate for the Lips’ current show but I had a concern that they don’t actually have enough happy, clappy songs to fill almost an hour of stage time in the sun.

The evidence suggested I was right. I had no problems in hearing ‘The Gash’ live for the first time but the recent b-side about Jack White sounded like one of those awful comedy and country’n’western novelty songs from the 70s.

Wayne will probably be horrified at such negativity, so let’s this bring this back on track. I simply can’t believe there was a better 10 minutes at T than the first 10 of the Lips’ set.

Wayne, Michael and 2 Welsh Yetis

First Wayne ambled on stage and told the audience that they would pay tribute to the absent Stripes by including a "little bit of the White Stripes" into the Lips’ set. Then the band came on, dressed in red and white (accompanied by fifteen costumed animals all decked in red, a couple of suns and even the man from whom Jack White nicked his dress sense, Santa Claus.) The opening number was no half baked Stripes tribute either - a fabulous cover of ‘Seven Nation Army’ which led straight into the euphoria of ‘Race for the Prize’. This was why so many people rate the Lips as a live band.

But it was also going to be hard to top that. The likes of ‘Fight Test’, ‘Do You Realize??’, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly’ and ‘Yoshimi Pt 1’ all kept the feelgood factor going nicely but the unnecessarily sugary (and belated) ‘Happy Birthday’ for Mr White was impressive only in Peter Buck being dragged onstage from the wings to join in the revelries.

Peter Buck tries to hide from the camerman