Today’s Highlights - Reflections on the Hay Festival

The dust is settling over one particular part of the Welsh Marches as the tens of thousands of culture enthusiasts return to their daily lives, having been right royally sated at this year’s Hay Festival.

The flags were still out but Hay-on-Wye returned to being a quiet rural town.

The weather was the star this year, with only a couple of wet-ish days. For the most part the sun shone and the countryside and river were able to show of their best.

Ticket sales were more than 15 per cent up, at 185,000. Phenomenal when considering Hay’s population of around 2,500. The quality of speakers was as high as ever but we shouldn’t forget the impact the Festival has on the speakers and performers as well as the ticket-buyers. Bill Clinton famously described the festival as “the Woodstock of the mind” whilst for Tony Benn it “has replaced Christmas”. I remember Maya Angelou waxing lyrical of the “land of poetry and rainbows” and this year Jason Bradbury, presenter of The Gadget Show, was amazed that he was in the same taxi that had just collected Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

One also wonders what David Simon made of this green and pleasant land? A journalist and author of the gritty books drawn from his time spent with the underworld of Baltimore. A world of drug dealers, good cops and bad and corrupt politicians all of whom have since been portrayed so successfully in the HBO series “The Wire”. Whatever he thought about sitting in a marquee on a warm spring evening in a field 24 miles from the nearest train station, at a table of American hardwood, chatting to Mark Lawson before a rapt audience of over 1000 white faces (with a few exceptions), he didn’t let on and no-one asked him. What he did let us know, however, is that our current obsession with MPs expenses is (to paraphrase) rather quaint. He said: "When you guys have a scandal it's… I bring you tidings from a world of Enron and AIG. Jimmy Cagney said, 'Never steal anything small.' Chandeliers! They wouldn't be fit to call themselves American politicians."

David Simon, creator of “The Wire” speaking at The Hay Festival

Our next report will be from “How The Light Gets In”, the philosophy festival that ran concurrently with the Hay Festival at The Globe Arts Centre in Hay. Our video report will include interviews with Hilary Lawson, philosopher, festival organiser and owner of The Globe, and Robin Ince, cultural commentator, comedian and radio and television panellist.

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