00:00Were you at Leeds in 2002?
00:02Oh yeah, yeah. I remember that festival quite well.
00:06That was my first Leeds festival that I went to actually.
00:10My friends went with me but camped in a completely different location.
00:17And me being Cavalier, I thought, oh, I'll just camp by myself, you know,
00:21get that full-blown festival experience.
00:24Me, strange as you know, but I was a right social butterfly back in that time.
00:30Lord knows what's happened.
00:32But yeah, I remember meeting on the first day a couple of older gentlemen, shall we say,
00:39that were quite leery.
00:41I mean, one of them kept walking around yelling, Quincy, Quincy.
00:45I'm not sure if he was looking for someone or if he was a fan of the television series.
00:51And then I met some fantastic people from Liverpool, from Cambridge.
00:55It was just a really nice feeling until that last night.
01:00Where I was in my tent, just thinking I'll get an early night, you know, studious as ever.
01:07And then as it transpired, there was helicopters flying overhead.
01:13So I'm thinking, whoa, what's going on here?
01:15That's a bit crazy, don't you think?
01:18It turns out that there was a riot happening.
01:20The riot.
01:21The riot that I've just been writing about.
01:24I wasn't anywhere near it, but we were in a close enough proximity to see the
01:33airy glow coming from the portaloos where bellows of thick black smoke
01:38were just emitting across Temple Newsham.
01:41That's crazy.
01:42Yeah, no, it was crazy.
01:43It was definitely crazy.
01:45I remember one person saying, I'll cover your mouth.
01:48You're all breathing in.
01:49Well, we're in the office, so fecal matter.
01:53It was insane.
01:54Absolutely incredible.
01:57I honestly thought the riot was going to happen because Guns N' Roses came out late on stage
02:03and I was in the middle of the crowd thinking, oh, Lord, please, please,
02:06please let Axl Rose come.
02:08Please let him come and play this gig.
02:11But no, it was the last night of the festival when it all kicked off.
02:14So then naturally, next year, Bramham Park start all over again.
02:20I think a lot of people were on their best behavior at that point in time.
02:23But yeah, what a baptism of fire for my first Leeds festival, right?
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