Fatboy Slim headlined the Kendal Calling festival on Saturday night, and revellers were left confused at one fan’s behaviour during the set
Roughly 40,000 revellers flocked to Lowther Deer Park in the Lake District this weekend for the Kendal Calling festival, where The Courteeners, Travis, The Prodigy, and Kaiser Chiefs took to the stage. However, the single moment that has set social media alight occurred during Fatboy Slim’s headline performance on Saturday evening.
Whilst the DJ – whose real name is Norman Cook – was delivering his 1999 chart-topper Praise You, one punter filming the show was utterly bewildered by the behaviour of the woman standing nearby. In footage posted by the Kendal Calling TikTok page, a female voice could be heard belting out the track’s lyrics, though not quite as anticipated.
Rather than simply being dreadfully out of tune like many of us regrettably are at concerts, the woman possessed a remarkable operatic voice – prompting comparisons to Britain’s Got Talent champion Susan Boyle.
The Kendal Calling account captioned their clip: “Tried to film Praise You at Fatboy Slim but was standing next to Susan Boyle???”
They noted in the description that the woman was “giving us vocals”, with viewers left stunned by just how talented the singer was – despite her performance being somewhat misplaced amongst the Fatboy Slim audience.
One user commented: “Think this might be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Another remarked: “I’m with her, at least she’s present in the moment, not filming for later.”
Whilst a third observed: “Once you reach a certain age, you sing everything in opera, unfortunately.”
Festival-goers who witnessed the woman’s vocal prowess insisted she “sang every song” in identical fashion, whilst one person crafted a brilliant pun playing on the BBC’s religious programme, Songs of Praise.
They quipped: “Songs of Praise You.”
This year, Kendal Calling celebrated its 20th anniversary. The festival concluded on Sunday (August 3rd), featuring fireworks as The Prodigy delivered their headline performance.
Andy Smith co-founded Kendal Calling and recently expressed his determination to preserve the festival’s character while it continues expanding each year.
He explained: “We do want it to be a rite of passage, but we also want it to be something that people all come back to. My group of friends is scattered around the country and world, but it’s the festival that is the one focal point of the year, where we’ll see everybody.
“We don’t want to lose the identity of the festival, so it’s grown slowly as we have grown and aged as people, and we seem to have got it right, because we’ve sold out every year for 20 years. But our Cumbrian roots are certainly something we’re very proud of, who isn’t who has had the luxury of growing up here?”.