Fairport’s Ric Sanders once described their annual Cropredy bash to me as “a little sanity in an Oxfordshire field”. Having just had my first Cropredy experience, I can see what he means. Despite a drenching during the day, festival-goers were in buoyant mood when I arrived for the evening, and there was an almost tangible buzz of excitement and anticipation. I was too late to catch local band Leatherat, sadly, but was in time to hear another local artist, the sweet-voiced Thea Gilmore, a former work experience girl at the North Oxfordshire-based Woodworm Studios.

Pauline Black of The Selecter stepped the pace up a few notches with an energetic set notable for its string of tuneful, toe-tapping numbers, such as On My Radio, Missing Words, Eyes on the Prize and Total Control, and for Ms Black’s exceptional voice — a powerful, dramatic instrument that I found thoroughly compelling. She also has a great ability to galvanise an audience into action, and on Thursday she soon had everyone clapping, singing along and waving their hands in the air. It was the perfect warm-up for the evening’s headline act — legendary rockers Status Quo, making their Cropredy debut.

As the stage was re-sent into the familiar Quo layout, there could be little doubt that this was the band most people had come to see, judging by the way everyone surged towards the stage as through drawn by a magnet.

After nearly half a century of rocking all over the world Quo have lost none of their ability to pull the crowds, and for nearly two hours the Cropredy field was transformed into a heaving mass of bodies bouncing enthusiastically up and down, punching the air and chanting ‘Quo-oh-oh-oh-oh!’ in the time-honoured way as Messrs Rossi, Parfitt et al thumped out hit after hit in their trademark power-driving style.

Old favourites Whatever You Want, Roll Over Lay Down and Down Down were intermingled with more recent favourites such as The Oriental and Creepin’ Up on You from the wonderful Heavy Traffic of 2002 – an album that saw the band return to their hard rock roots after some disappointing releases in the late nineties and early noughties. There were some blasts from the past, too, with the 1960s hit Down the Dustpipe, Mean Girl from the 1971 album Dog of Two Head, Softer Ride from the Hello album of 1973, and the ‘petrolhead’ Parfitt classic, Don’t Drive My Car, a hit in 1980.

Francis Rossi — who could probably have forged a successful career as a comedian if the rock music thing hadn’t worked out — was in particularly good form, entertaining the fans with his usual wisecracks and general silliness.

At 11.15pm — slightly late (I noticed one steward glancing anxiously at his watch during the encore) — it was finally over, and the crowd melted away, some of us to nice civilised bricks and mortar, the majority to the famous Cropredy campsite for a brief respite before getting ready to do it all again the next day.