"I won’t sit down and I won’t shut up/ And most of all I will not grow up", belts out the lean 30-year-old Frank Turner on his rousing anthem "Photosynthesis", and the bolshie folkie from Winchester is the highlight of this inaugural Able2UK concert for disabled awareness.

“You looked confused at some points,” amiably admits Paul Heaton after overseeing his confusing and long-winded soul opera, The 8th.

Two urban festivals in a similar rural spirit occupy Victoria Park this weekend.

'I wanted to be in musicals'

Frank Turner is a former hardcore Punkster who fronted band Million Dead in the early noughties. But his much gentler, quintessentially English folk-influenced solo material has earned him enough fans to sell-out a 12,000-capacity Wembley Arena.

As the gig of a lifetime looms for the Winchester singer, he tells Steve Anderson why he's seizing the moment while silencing the critics from his past

Cameron's project inspires musical parody, writes Jonathan Brown

Phill Jupitus to star in theatrical send-up of the Prime Minister's grand concept

Darren Hayman, who bears more than a passing resemblance to “McLovin” in Superbad, welcomed the New Year in with an intimate (approximately 70 people, some of whom even pointed out tiny discrepancies in Hayman's anecdotes), stripped-down, free and upsettingly stunted set, in which the singer-songwriter didn’t even perform on stage, but to the side of it.

Jubilant students at Glasgow University were celebrating a victory last night after one of the longest sit-ins in British history.

The singer Billy Bragg, a high-profile campaigner against the British National Party, will today argue for electoral reform as a crucial step to marginalising extremist politicians.

Though keen to work my way through all 424 pages of Kay "Hurly" Burley's debut novel First Ladies, I must confess to having been waylaid by its acknowledgements section: a revealing roll call of the company Ms Burley keeps when she's not on Sky News encouraging celebrity divorcees to blub. The erstwhile ice dancer's first two thank-yous go to fellow chick-lit authors Tasmina Perry and Kathy Lette, who obligingly provided First Ladies with pre-publication puff quotes. Lord Mandelson, too, merits Ms Burley's gratitude, and claims on the cover that she "uses her unrivalled knowledge of the worlds of politics, media and celebrity to racy effect". (Yes, Peter, but is it any good?) Also thanked profusely are former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who left office under a cloud of (alleged) dubious financial dealings; Damian McBride, who left Gordon Brown's employ when he was caught discussing whether to spread scandalous tales about the private lives of Tories; and Lord Archer, who was jailed for perjury. If you need help creating a work of fiction, I suppose there are worse people to ask.