Preparations are well underway for the Big Feastival, with a fabulous line-up of musicians, comedians and, most importantly, food. We find out more from cheesemaker and Blur bassist Alex James, who hosts the event on his farm in Kingham – and pick up some good festival advice along the way
Alex James is clearly a man who loves his Cotswolds life, good food and drink and partying.
Put them all together and you get The Big Feastival, a celebration of food and music now in its 15th year that promises fun for all the family.
With a music line-up including Basement Jaxx, The Streets and Bastille, comedy from the likes of Joel Dommett and Suzi Ruffell, great food from chefs such as Simon Rogan, Anna Haugh, Emily English and Rachel Allen, and plenty of activities for children, it’s not surprising that this event held on the August Bank Holiday weekend attracts thousands of people every year.
We chat over a Zoom call on a sunny April day and the bassist with the indie band Blur is clearly full of the joys of spring; indeed his exuberance and delight with how the year is progressing is palpable.
‘Coming to the Cotswolds was the best thing we ever did. We love it,’ says the Bournemouth-born pop star, cheesemaker and father of five.
‘We [referring to his wife Claire Neate whom he married in 2003] bought the farm on our honeymoon: we fell in love in the Cotswolds, on a park bench in Little Barrington (where Claire’s boss had a house) and I thought: “Blimey, I’m in trouble here”.
‘I always thought the Cotswolds to be the prettiest place I have ever seen. Blur’s drummer [Dave Rowntree] and I got pilot’s licences so that we could fly ourselves around when we were on tour, and if we could fly ourselves over the Cotswolds, even if we didn’t need to, we would. It’s just a jewel in the English countryside.
‘The kids were born here. Every year the changing seasons exhilarate me more and more. The charms of the countryside are very deep and powerful. I cannot believe the speed that things change. Right now the cherry blossom is out when just a few weeks ago the trees were bare. All this stuff is detonating and I’m wandering around, giggling like a madman’.
While this all sounds like a rural idyll, the tough realities of farming were brought home to Alex by the previous owner of his Kingham home, a beef farmer whose herd was destroyed by foot-and-mouth disease.
And while its location couldn’t be more deeply ensconced in the countryside, even it’s not been immune to world events.
‘I received a letter from a chap who grew up from the farm. He told me how it was bombed after a German raid over Coventry. The German pilot got lost and saw a railway line and instead got River Field. It’s just incredible to think of this perfect little piece of peace and seclusion being bombed within living memory.’
Being a cheesemaker, Alex was especially delighted to learn that his farm was once renowned for the quality of its dual-purpose shorthorn cattle, some of which were exported to Texas, America and New Zealand in decades gone by.
Food is very much the unique selling point of the Big Feastival, and as far as Alex is concerned, there’s no better place to experience it than in the Cotswolds.
‘I couldn’t have done this if not for the incredible renaissance in food and drink here over the past 20 years.
‘The Cotswolds is like Mecca for food. We arrived the same month that Daylesford opened. I kept thinking the bubble would burst, but then we’ve had things like Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat and more gastropubs and members’ clubs.
‘It’s mad to think we were running out of food during the Second World War, that bacon was rationed into the 1950s when my dad was young.
‘It’s incredible that a generation ago, there wasn’t enough food to go around and cooking skills were lost.’
Alex talks enthusiastically about how things have gradually changed, citing developments such as Ian Fleming’s near ‘food porn’ in the James Bond books.
‘In Moonraker, M takes Bond to his club, Blades, where Bond has smoked salmon, lamb cutlets and slices of pineapple, which must have sounded wonderful back then. Then there were food writers like Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, and Marco Pierre White went on to be the first British chef to get three Michelin stars and Jamie Oliver was making TV programmes about food.
‘Suddenly we were able to reclaim this food culture. There’s no doubt Britain is the most exciting place on the planet for food now.’
Alex credits his own love of eating and drinking to French exchange trips as a teenager, which he described as ‘going into another world’, with people prepared to go out and buy bread twice a day and spend hours having lunch.
Over the past two decades he’s won several awards for his own cheese, which includes Blue Monday, named after the New Order hit, and Little Lily, made from goats milk.
The catalyst for the Big Feastival was a chance encounter with TV chef Jamie Oliver, with the pair quickly finding they shared a love of good food and music.
‘Jamie Oliver is a good drummer,’ Alex observes. ‘We met when we were both in a Comic Relief band as the rhythm section for Westlife, doing Uptown Girl.
‘It was the start of a friendship and he helped to get the ball rolling for Feastival and comes back every now and again.
‘I guess I was the one in Blur who liked to party. When Claire and I moved here, I didn’t want to go on tour anymore. With the kids arriving, we moved the party here.
‘There are a lot of people who have grown up with festivals and now have kids; they want to spend time with the family but still bounce up and down to Basement Jaxx.’ Avid Feastival fans will be delighted to see the event is retaining much of its tried-and-tested formula, but every year there are new additions to the offering.
‘We were four to five years in when we started doing DJ sets. I did a set and it didn’t matter what I played, people were going nuts for it.
‘I remember going online and finding the most shocking things I could, like the 1970s band Racey.
‘Simon Pegg did an amazing DJ set, he usually comes with his family, and we’ll have the Syrup Takeover – bring a wig – on the Sunday with Seb Fontaine and Tall Paul, stalwarts of the cheese hub.’
Alex reckons that Big Feastival now has as many as 30 different stages, including music, comedy and cooking demonstrations, as well as spaces to chill out and relax. ‘We just have to keep trying new stuff; you don’t know what’s going to work until you try it.
‘The kids have grown up with it and it’s one time when having a big family becomes an asset. They have all found roles. Beatrix has been running a merch stand in the cheese hub since she was at junior school and last year one of the twins gave me a proposal for cheese on toast.’
All in all, Alex says he’s ‘living the dream’, and it’s clear that he means it.
Somewhat self-deprecatingly, he observes that times have changed since the 1990s, when Blur were at the top of the charts with hits like Parklife and Girls & Boys and earning brickbats from Britpop rivals Oasis; interestingly Liam Gallagher has recently moved to the Cotswolds himself, although he’s living near Cirencester and there are plenty of rolling hills and dry stone walls between them.
‘I think it’s really difficult to be in independent bands anymore, that business model doesn’t work,’ says Alex. ‘Massive bands still work, and Adele and Taylor Swift are bigger than anyone has ever been. You either have to be massive or nothing.
‘But with independent food production you can do something. You can make small batch runs of incredible pickled shallots or smoked salmon. There’s an incredible amount of diversity and interesting stuff; the spirit of independence still thrives in food production.’
Come August, a team of around 2,000 will be moving into Alex’s farm at Kingham to set up Feastival, a process that takes around eight days, after which thousands of people will be beating a path there for a weekend of music, comedy, relaxing and food; and he can’t wait.
‘I’m looking forward to all the of the music, with some really amazing bands in the line-up. Bastille will be great, my kids love them and I’ve been trying to get them for years. We’re looking forward to Ms Dynamite – my wife used to make videos for her.
‘I have endless enthusiasm and a determination to succeed.
‘Seeing people on this derelict farm we bought when we were on honeymoon and filling it with things we love is very special. It’s great that we’ve already sold 85 per cent of our camping and we have an overall capacity for 25,000 visitors. It makes me happy that half my kids want to be chefs. When I was a kid, everybody wanted to be a footballer; nowadays the idea of a super snazzy, swish chef is appealing too.
‘Big Feastival goes up in eight days and comes down in four and by the weekend afterwards you wouldn’t know anybody was here.
‘This is the most fun I have ever had.’
As we prepare to end our call, I admit that I’ve not been able to go Feastival as the event coincides with the date of our village fête, with which I’m closely involved.
Alex leaves me with good advice based on his years of experience: ‘Get the food sorted, the music sorted and the kids sorted and you will be fine,’ he says..
Held from August 28-30, Big Feastival is the ultimate celebration of music, food and family fun, held in association with Monzo. Headline acts for 2026 include Basement Jaxx, Bastille and The Streets, which will be performing A Grand Don’t Come for Free for the first time. Special guests are: Rudim3ntal, Perrie, Mimi Webb, Doves, White Lies, Freya Ridings, The Coral, Antony Szmierek, Meek , Red Rum Club, Ms Dynamite, Nubiyan Twist, Tors, The Ordinary Boys, Bradley Simpson, Jerub, She’s in Parties, The Rosadocs, Fiona-Lee and The Cuban Brothers.
Superstar DJs and bands in The Outpost will be Fabio & Grooverider, Revial House Project, The Allergies, The Horne Section, Sweet Female Attitude, Barrioke, Duke, Disco Ceilidh, Gospeloke, Hip Hop House Band, Grohlercoaster, and more.
Other highlights include Alex James’ Cheese Hub, The Barn with Sofar Sounds and a silent disco.
Representing good food will be Simon Rogan, Anna Haugh, Emily English, Rachel Allen, Poppy O’Toole, Tom Barnes, Meera Sodha, Nokx Majozi, Sally Abé, Jon Watts, Mat Blak, Amber Francis, Freddy Bird, Rosie Kellett, Duncan Robertson & Kyu Jeon, Christina Soteriou, Melanie Brown and more. There will be a Big Kitchen, Cookery School, Kids’ Kitchen with Prept, The Fire Pit, The Smokery, Culinary Masterclasses, Fire Feasts with Mat Blak and friends and Lazy Lunches with Pit Kitchen. Hosts will include Lagom chef Martyn Odell, Hannah Harley Young and Simon the Butcher.
The Good Times section will include comedy and podcasts from Joel Dommett, host of ITV’s The Masked Singer; Suzi Ruffell, Harriet Kemsley, Ivo Graham, Shappi Khorsandi, Inbetweeners stars Joe Thomas and James Buckley’s Fact Up podcast, Scott Bennett, The Scummy Mummies and Daniel Foxx.
Special guests suitable for all the family will be Justin Fletcher, MC Grammar, Nick Cope and Maddie Moate’s Big Honeybee Bash, with further family fun provided by Taskmaster Club, Adam Henson’s Cotswold Farm Park, Tales of Beatrix Potter, Big Feastival Barn Dance, Lizzie’s Way Woodland Play, The Flying Seagull Project, Circus School, Children’s Theatre, special guest bedtime stories and more.
Presenting partner Monzo will be bringing a whole host of activities to the farm, including the Monzo VIP Lounge, adding a splash of hot coral to brighten up everyone’s festival experience.
Big Feastival takes place on Alex James’ Farm from August 28-30.
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