V festival to take on the world

Sir Richard Branson has announced that V Festivals will take place in a number of new countries.

The highly successful UK V festival has been taking place at Hylands Park in Chelmsford and Weston Park in Staffordshire for a number of years.

This year Radiohead and Morrissey headlined the event with other acts including Kasabian, Hard-Fi, Razorlight and Faithless.

Sir Richard told Reuters: "The great thing about doing it in more than one country is we can coordinate it and get the bands moving between countries.

"We are looking at Italy, Spain and South America, we will roll it out."

This year on September 23rd a US V festival date will go-ahead featuring The Who, Red Hot Chill Peppers, The Flaming Lips and Gnarls Barkley.

Sir Richard also commented on the importance of live sets and touring for bands in the modern music scene.

"Tours will play a much greater part in the coming years. From a band's point of view, they make more out of playing live than out of music sales," he stated.

No doubt US festival goers will be excited by the proposition of a spectacular Flaming Lips set, likely to include Wayne Coyne reaching the stage in an inflatable bubble and people in various animal suits leaping around.