The Latitude is a festival that’s been around for about four years, and has rapidly got a rep for being a very nice (if middle-class) fest. Its USP is the mix of music, comedy, theatre, caberet and kiddie-friendliness – over the course of the weekend I saw a solo set from Thom Yorke, 1927 (an acting trio who interact with projected animations to wonderful effect), a documentary about people living on Bodmin Moor… you get the idea.

This year was my third performing as part of Robin Ince’s Book Club – a comedy night based around books, knowledge, science, romance, politics and any other eclectic topics the performers can drag in. This year was a classic line up, featuring Josie Long, Kevin Eldon, Waen Shephard, Jo Neary, Gavin Osborn, Rich Sandling, Sue Vale, Sarah Bennetto, Johnny Candon, Ben Goldacre, Luke and Nadia, and probably a bunch of other great people I missed. BC regulars Martin White and Pappy’s Fun Club were off doing stuff on other stages, so were around a lot less this year, but regular MC Robin Ince was there in exhausted but typically brilliant form.

The first order of the day was Answer Me This! Live, a VERY loose version of the podcast with Helen but sans Olly. Josie Long and Matthew Crosby guested in his place. This was the first time we’d tried something so unplanned, but the usual vibe of the show changed a bit when Small Children started wandering in in anticipation of the Book at Bedtime which followed, asking questions like “If you could have as many arms as you wanted, how many would you have?”. An interesting experiment. A slightly more psychadelic feel than our usual shows, too…

Soundtracking Children’s Book at Bedtime was less surreal but more noisy. A hundred children screaming at the top of their lungs (all part of telling the story of Horrid Henry) makes a Motorhead concert sound like Belle and Sebastian Unplugged. I think I lost my top 5KHz in one fell swoop.

I played a surprising number of Sound of The Ladies songs over the weekend. Rich Sandling’s film themed slot gave me the chance to play “Wash the Sleep from my eyes…” (it was inspired by a viewing of Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life”), an intensely miserable song which seemed to go over well, possibly due to the singalong aspect. “We went to the bottom of the ocean” turned up in the “we love science” session, “clouds at the top of the sky” in the “religious fundamentalism” slot (it’s about the tower of Babel), and non-canonical “Meet me on Monday” in the “love” section on Sunday afternoon. People seemed entirely happy to hear non-comedy songs in the middle of a comedy gig, which was refreshing and made it that much more fun. Thanks to everyone who came.

I know most of you will have been patiently skimming through this Latitude chat for news about Sunday’s big event: the Peasenhall Pea Festival. It did not disappoint*. The UK’s only pea festival featured cooking demonstrations, pea throwing and massive bags of fresh peas for a fiver. I won’t pretend I wasn’t tempted. Or that I didn’t buy a massive bag of peas.

I’d love to tell you all about the other great stuff at the Latitude – the late but triumphant appearance of Peter Buckley Hill, eating Stuart Maconie’s branded biscuits and being in the same room as Tires from Spaced – but I really have to make inroads into all those peas. See you next week!

*except when I missed twenty minutes of Thom Yorke’s set because I’d been dicking around at the pea fest. That was pretty fucking disappointing.