’Whassup pirate muthaf***as?’ screams Beastie Boy Mike D on taking to the Bestival stage.  The surrounding well-to-do of the Isle of Wight (or as it has now been renamed ‘Isle of Mike’) in their countryside-view retirement homes may well be confused by the noises emanating from Robin Hill Country Park, but one look around the crowd confirms that we are indeed surrounded by thousands of Jack Sparrow and Captain Hook clones.

And they’re not alone.  This is the now legendary costume day of Rob Da Bank’s three day end-of-summer extravaganza and the park, more used to kids on slides and August afternoon kickabouts, is overflowing with increasingly sozzled people in increasingly bizarre costumes.  Over there is a group of Where’s Wallys…over there a collection of wizards, and coming towards us a very impressive collection of Smurfs.  There’s a stained Clockwork Orange droog collapsed in a heap by the noodle van and a selection of superheroes who aren’t going to be seeing their fancy dress shop deposit again.  But mostly there’s pirates…pirates with hats, pirates with papier mache boats, lady pirates in indecently short shorts, pirates with eyeliner moustaches melting in the heat.

In fact it appears that it takes a pretty special act to distract the crowd from each other.  Bestival is as much about the people as the music, which appears to provide a backing track to a chilled out weekend of drinking, camping and side shows.  A neverending programme offers us Coldcut video installations, Easy Star All Stars’ dub reggae versions of Radiohead tunes, Brazilian funksters Bonde do Role, belly dancing, burlesque, salsa dancing…even the can-can.  There’s comedy, bands we’ve never heard of, side shows galore and more DJs than you can shake an inflatable cutlass at.  The crowds, squeezed in to a narrow, hilly and overcrowded space are spoiled for choice.  Legs aching after the long walk from the car park and heads aching from one too many ciders, most of them seem to head for the Main Stage.

Which is where we join Mike D and his fellow MCs, headlining a day which has seen Madness break out the greatest hits as the day’s surprise guests (‘someone on the ferry over here said they thought it was going to be Robbie Williams’ says Suggs, but older members of the crowd aren’t disappointed at the opportunity to revive the synchronised-knees-up-on-the-spot-elbows-out-ska-skip).  The Cuban Brothers’ meanwhile have taken us on a high octane and somewhat bizarre trip to party central, weird and wonderful asides combined with strange covers of Lionel Richie tracks have got the crowd well and truly in the mood for the evening’s headliners.

However, just as we’re up on our feet and ready to fight for our right to paaaarty some joker unleashes BBC DJ Zane Lowe on us.  He proceeds to (apparently) play a mix tape on a 1980s boom box while shouting ‘are you ready for the Beastie Boys?’ at regular intervals to mutterings of ‘yes, now f*** off’.  Thirty minutes in and the plug is abruptly pulled – the Beastie Boys have some atmosphere to make up.

And they do it effortlessly, pulling out track after track to keep everyone, whether pirate or magician, satisfied – long forgotten old skool classics Sabotage and No Sleep til Brooklyn, mid-90s Brit-hits Intergalactic and Body Movin, funktastic instrumental tracks from their latest offering, The Mix Up.  And it says something about this festival that while a band well known for rarely playing outside of their native New York, are performing the finest hip hop set ever heard on a tiny island off the south coast of England a couple to our left are apparently shagging.  Bestival is about the people, the music is just the soundtrack to their weekend. 

The album, A to Z: Bestival 2007, is out now.

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Laura Heaps, MyVillage, 10th September