As the echoey, descending riff of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ reverberates around Donington Park, I am shoved abruptly through a Proustian window. It’s the early Nineties, I’m 15 and my best friend Bea and I are sitting on a couple of obliging random guys’ shoulders. I’m passed a very strong spliff as Guns n’ Roses – ‘the most dangerous band in the world’ – take the stage. Our parents have no idea where we are. Some 80,000 people put their hands in the air and go wild. This is the most exciting thing we’ve experienced in our provincial lives.    

Someone tugs my sleeve. ‘Mummy I can’t see,’ and I’m jolted back to the present by today’s gig buddy – my ten-year-old son.   

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Thank God for Jude Bellingham

G n’R are now his favourite band and I’ve got him as close to the front as I can so he can see his idol, lead guitarist Slash, IRL rather than on the big screens. But as he’s five foot-nothing, we retreat back to the edge of the crowd where older fans, who’ve parked themselves for the duration in fold-up camping chairs complain that we’re in their way.    

This is so not rock ‘n’ roll that I don’t know where to start. But then, as the responsible adult, I’m drinking 0 per cent beer and the only thing I smoke these days is one of the five cigarettes a day I consider an essential component of........

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