Gallery: More toilets shipped in as Latitude grew in popularity in 2008

Franz Ferdinand, Sigur Ros and Interpol headlined in 2008 as Latitude established itself on the festival calendar.

Hektor Rous, estate manager at Henham, said in the months leading up to the festival: “There is just so much entertainment, with comedy and poetry and literature. It is not just the music. It is an amazing weekend and it’s a perfect match - it is beautiful here around the lake and with the landscape.”

The festival was a sell out, with the last of the 25,000 tickets being snapped up a month before the event.

The Obelisk Arena grew in 2008 and the poetry and comedy areas were extended having been overwhelmed the previous year.

New attractions for 2008 included Pandora’s Playground - a “discovery area” of wacky artistic creations - and an island Pimm’s bar in the middle of the lake which could only hold two festival-goers and one barman at a time.

A TV crew broadcast parts of the weekend on ITV2 and ITV3.

Melvin Benn, managing director of Festival Republic, as the organisers were now known, reassured festival goers ahead of the event that they could expect the same usual quirks.

He said: “We’re still having painted sheep, but I’m going to have them a uniform colour - purple. I felt it would be a nice colour. They’ve developed an iconic status.”

The rudimentary toilets were also back, painted with the festival’s trademark daisies, but there were a lot more of them.

The bars, all made of reclaimed materials, sold Suffolk’s Aspall cider and there was a large pink poodle in the poetry tent.