Music hacks tend to get really sniffy about The Kooks. The snobs.

If they'd sold 30, 000 records instead of a million, journos would probably be calling them the teenage La's. They're not, but the fact remains they're a classic English pop band with tunes to burn.

Buuuuuuut…

They've not got nearly enough muscle to form a headline set. Interminable five-minute jam sessions that smack of padding and a lack of real focus or energy leave us drifting. No encore, either.

Not that Stafford is unappreciative. Singing along is mandatory. You can pretty much bet that everyone here has a copy of 'Inside In/Inside Out' in their home – it's practically the new '(What's The Story) Morning Glory' – a sort of Gideon's Bible for young folk.

Frontman Luke Pritchard played a new song in a backstage wigwam for NME's Dan Martin this morning. It was pretty ace, and they will return.

"We're going away for a while. This is the last gig we're going to do for a long time, thanks for sharing it with us," Luke later tells us. In a while, they will be older and wiser, but for now they're an efficient pub band who've written a handful of classic songs.

Best Song: 'Seaside'

Best Moment: Luke's overall demeanour – he's such a haphazard figure – wearing some sort of unbuttoned blouse and a very nondescript T-shirt, like he just rolled out of bed.

"Alright? We brought the weather with us yeah? Have it. Cheers V Festival. Cider drinkers," Bez tells V, standing alone, post-gig on the 4Music Stage, addressing the crowd.

At least, that's how we think he punctuated it. Bez is not the kind of guy who has any real relationship with punctuation. Words just drop out of him in a more or less haphazard fashion. But he looks good.

They all do. Even Shaun Ryder (albeit in a hamster-in-a-tracksuit sort of way). He's lucid, upbeat and funny. "Look at him – he plans out those dance moves at home, you know," he says, of Bez's freaky grooving. The Mondays somehow sound good too (for the Mondays).

Which is especially weird, given the tales of car-crash gigs that have followed them across their recent tour. And yes, V's thirtysomethings have all arrived with the lexicon of dance moves they reserve for these occasions. Nostalgia: it's the future.

Best Song: 'Wrote For Luck'

Best Moment: Mr Ryder's own mini-dance moves – the kind only someone who's spent too many hours of their life chewing their gums off at The Hacienda can perform.

With yet another great album in the can, it seems like The Coral are becoming one of those bands who make great music just at the edge of the national consciousness forever.

Today, they again cement a reputation for moody virtuosity. With barely a word spoke, Mr Skelly and his team take us on a tour of cosmic scouseland, from early effort 'I Remember When', to the swirling psychedelia of new single 'Who's Gonna Find Me', with 'Dreaming Of You' reminding V of what a classic pop band they can be.

James Skelly himself seems as underwhelmed as ever by the general outpouring of love, but then, he's always opaque: you're never really sure what's going through his mind.

Best Song: 'Pass It On'

Best Moment: During 'She Sings The Mourning', when guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones plays a one-stringed guitar with a violin bow.

"He's a fookin disgrace, him."

"Bollocks, it's not because he's late, it's because he's coked off his face."

The problem with being a tabloid darling is that plenty of people start coming to watch your gigs merely in the ghoulish hope that you'll stagger onstage with a hypodermic poking out of your arm, get two bars into 'Time For Heroes' and fall over.

So when you do actually fuck up, they're ready. "Told you he wouldn't last…"

To bileful boos, Babyshambles' scheduled 6:20 set was abandoned a few minutes ago.

Pete was "having traffic problems", apparently.

The fact that it was a full 20 minutes after Jet had finished that we were informed suggests that this may not be the whole truth. Instead, Pete and his gang will be appearing on the Virgin Union Stage at 10pm.

"Myself and the future have a very bad relationship," Pete once said." It sounded daring and romantic then.

It begins with Jet prime howler Nic Cester sitting on the front of the stage supping beer. It ends with him mounting the drumkit, doing Townshend-style windmills.

Jet may not exactly test the outer limits of originality, but they played a blinder today. We've seldom seen so much beer become airborne.

A joke band? Possibly, but it's become a pretty good joke.

Best Song: 'Roll Over Beethoven'

Best Moment: When drummer Chris kicks over his kit at the show's end then moons the crowd.

If you think the gaggle of teenage girls to NME's left were in love with The Thrills, you should see what they're doing for the fucking Fray. An orgy of whooping and hollering and clapping plays itself out to the left, and all over in fact, even when singer Isaac Slade announces he's been wearing the same pants for three days.

It's a strange feeling to scan an eye over a happy throng and realise that these thousands of souls are ALL warped. Cheering The Fray is like cheering at a beheading.

A plodding MOR emptiness that's probably minutely duller than Hoobastank or Lifehouse, or well, who cares?

Oh, and their singer looks like a boiled baby.

Best Moment: N/A.

Best Song: Their cover of 'White Riot'. Only joking, there wasn't one of course.