AS pop’s former crown prince of hedonism, Blur’s Alex James might be expected to know a thing or two about laying on a party.

After all, if his own memoirs of excess – the brilliant A Bit of a Blur – are to be believed, no one did the ‘rock & roll’ thing better, making his way through a succession of beautiful women, blowing £1m on champagne, and doing his bit to subsidise agriculture in the shadier parts of South America... if you get our drift.

So when he announced he was holding his own festival, we looked forward to it with relish.

So you can forgive some of those who turned up to the weekend’s Harvest festival to have felt a little short-changed, finding what one called a “top toff’s garden party”.

Despite boasting a promising line-up, Harvest failed to ignite, with music being pushed to the sidelines by a bunch of glorified caterers.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with chefs at festivals; indeed Harvest was sold on the back of the calibre of its culinary talent. It’s just that... well, it’s just not very rock&roll is it? And handing one of two stages over to the pan-botherers, left those who had principally gone for the music anxiously drumming their fingers.

None of that seemed to bother the denizens of the Cotswolds, of course. Messieurs Cameron, Clarkson and the Chippy Set turned out in their countrywear, joining Harry Enfield, Mariella Frostrup and Holby City’s Tina Hobley for a ‘luvee’ love-in.

A friend of The Guide, himself well-immersed in the Cotswold social scene, but who will thank us for not mentioning his name, was even less charitable, describing it as “a blown-up version of a village fete, which you had to pay through the nose to get in to, and which didn’t even have an oddly-shaped vegetable competition.”

He went on to say: “Perhaps we have been spoilt with both the quality of the Wilderness and Cornbury festivals this year, but this was a celebrity bash which the public funded, full of cooks who were either promoting their restaurants or their forthcoming books.” Harsh!

Now, of course, we all know that if Alex had really been organising it, instead of simply hosting it, Harvest would have been the festival of the year. A genuinely nice bloke, Alex is self-effacingly honest, generous and down-to-earth, and is a first-rate musician, cheese-maker and dad. We just get the feeling that he would have been happier hanging out at, let’s say, Bestival – where his old bandmate Graham Coxon was bashing out the tunes, while sharing his delicious toasted cheese with the likes of Public Enemy, The Cure, Bjork, and some of Oxford’s most interesting musicians. But that’s another story... and one which will have to wait until next week.