O2 Wireless - Saturday

The first decade after acid house was particularly kind to superstar DJs worldwide with dance music peaking alongside the power and pay cheque of the man behind the decks, but the second decade since the last summer of love has not treated the kings and queens of noise quite as kindly.

These days, with random drummers from crap bands everywhere swapping the sticks for headphones, a DJ set would appear to involve very little else other than the ability to borrow someone else’s shiny record collection.

Then there is the rare breed, a DJ who has a back catalogue overflowing with monster hits of their own and, whisper it, a decent album or two. Fatboy Slim is one of the few DJs who in the current musical climate could pull a crowd to rival that of Jay Z and Morrissey, with or without the backing of the pop and dance acts that had preceded him on stage.

The July sunset almost passed for dawn and had the revellers not been so sober and well turned out, Hyde Park could have passed for a rave circa 1990, some Candi Staton and Alison Limerick would have gone down nicely. Right from the first bone shaking chords of ‘Praise You’, chopping up hits like Beyonce’s ‘Crazy in Love’ and then the Stones' ‘Satisfaction’ with his own ‘Rockafeller Skank’, Mr Cook had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand and dropping in an endless mix of ‘Right Here Right Now' only kicked things up a notch.

This was essentially Fatboy Slim’s annual mega appearance, only this time you could attend the year’s biggest party without being the proud owner of a Brighton postcode. Unsurprisingly the crowd were in an appreciative party mood having already taking party in several mini parties throughout the afternoon and early evening.

An intimate gig from Sam Sparro, the only man ever to pull of an Ashcroft ego whilst dressed as the nerd from an American chick flick, was undoubtedly one of the days highlights, although they did appear to have roughly 29 different keyboards involved in the setup, which although makes for a great signature sound I am not quite sure how intimate that really is. Either way ‘Black and Gold’ was only rivalled by songstress Robyn for the days catchiest song, whistles of ‘With Every Heartbeat’ are probably still ringing around the underground as we speak.

At a glance the Saturday day time line-up didn’t actually throw up too many glaringly obvious choices for whom to go and see but in hindsight it offered a spate of names you will have heard of but are not yet familiar with that are all actually pretty good.

Manchester dance merchants The Whip are surely fed up of bubbling under now and proved to all the early birds they are ready for some extra recognition whilst Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip and Cut Copy ensure the Sandisk stage was the place to be in the early afternoon sunshine. Although plenty will already know what they had to offer Audiobullys were still a star attraction even tucked away on the Tuborg stage which, once not even an army of small ants could fit into see Underworld, allowed Booka Shade to steal the show.

So with all the headliners drawing plaudits the people behind the scenes had done their job, whether there is still hope for the superstar DJ outside San Antonio waits to be seen but a lot of people will enjoy themselves finding out.