It’s that time of year again when we all head to Clapham Common, strip off most (in some cases all) of our clothes and burn our skin to the sound of amazing music from some of the world’s best artists with an alcoholic bevvy in hand. Yup, it’s time for Clapham Common Festival season – just another typical summer eh? There’s tonnes going on and here’s a brief run through of what’s been, gone and coming up…

• Saturday, 24 July
  Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common: day one (go to site) SOLD OUT
• Sunday, 25 July
  Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common: day two (go to site) SOLD OUT
• Saturday, 28th August
  South West Four 2010: day one with Armin Van Buuren (go to site)
• Sunday, 29th August
  South West Four 2010: day two with Fat Boy Slim and Salt n’ Pepa (go to site)
• Friday, 24 September
  Toast Festival: South Africa (go to site)
• Saturday, 25 September
  Toast Festival: New Zealand (go to site)
• Sunday, 26 September
  Toast Festival: Australia (go to site)

Have you been to one? Was it good? Bad? Tell us on the Clapham Forum.

Love Clapham’s on holiday this week, so sorry about the site being slightly quieter. This weekend marks the end of Clapham’s run of festivals – boo hoo! – and it’s the big ones, SW4 and Get Loaded in the Park. If you managed to secure yourself tickets have a wicked time! We’ll have Clapham Picture House’s film listings up today or tomorrow, but Love Clapham’s mega excited about a one-off charity screening of Bugsie Malone at 1pm on Bank Holiday Monday. Classic! Now, if you will excuse us, Love Clapham needs to go and chillax. TTYL.

What’s your idea of heaven? Part of LoveClapham’s idea of heaven includes endless supplies of ice cream. Thanks to Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common festival this Saturday and Sunday, we’re going to have heaven on earth… on Clapham Common to be specific. Not only are the Human League (the blinkin’ Human League!!) and the Super Furry Animals performing at the festival, there will be non-stop supplies of ice cream too. But that’s not all that’s going on in Clapham this weekend, keep reading for your chance to win a £500 bar tab for The Loft. Enter quickly ‘cos LoveClapham’s got our eye on THAT prize!

Not only are those fiesty people at The Loft offering 50% off meals during the week, 2-4-1 on selected cocktails, now they’re throwing £500 at you. Literally throwing wads of cash in your FACE! Well… maybe not. But they are offering The Loft customers the chance to get their sexy paws on that £500 bar tab we mentioned. Visit The Loft’s website for all the details to help you on your way to an amazing night out in Clapham.

On Sunday, don’t forget to get jiggy at Gigalum for their 3rd birthday. With an amazingly successful three years under their belts, they have reason to offer free food and drinks to anyone that turns up at 3pm on Sunday to celebrate.

Watch the above interview with DJ Armin Van Buuren as he talks about the run-up to SW4 on Clapham Common. It’s always a massive festival, and this year looks to be no exception when it finally happens on Saturday 29 August. Note Love Clapham’s favourite clubbing accessory in this video: massive sunglasses when you’re inside. Oh yes. An after show party has also just been announced for an additional twenty smackers at The Coronet in Elephant & Castle. Eric Prydz will be playing, if that helps tempt you to part with your cash. Visit our Clapham Festival Guide to find out about all upcoming Clapham Common gigs.

News hitting the Clapham interweb includes the 20,000 people who turned up to Toast Festival 2009 on Clapham Common making it an unmitigated success. We’ve added more photos from the event to our Clapham Pictures gallery. Still can’t believe it’s a festival with horses. Amazing. For people who live on or near the Clapham/Balham Weir Estate. be sure to check out the all sparkly, all new Weir Estate Residents Association website. It hopes to give residents a voice while also offering more info than you can shake a stick at – an essential site. Remember the Twitter Tweek Cookoff we mentioned last week? Well, Clapham didn’t win this time, but we did judge! Full report on the Clapham Omnibus Blog.

This week’s Clapper is going like the clappers. Believe it or not, these stunning photos are from Clapham Common at the Toast Festival 2009 polo competition, the festival’s main highlight. From the first day, you can see South Africa vs Great Britain in the above picture. Great Britain won 7:6. Thanks to Eddie Clarke, who runs the Clapham Omnibus blog, for sending these in, see a selection of photos including the Umhlathuzi welcome singers in the rest of this post.

Toast Festival 2009's Umhlathuzi singers

Toast Festival 2009 South Africa Player

Players giving it their all in the Great Britain vs South Africa polo match

The umpire trots across Clapham Common

Polo players compete in a heated match

Toast Festival safety zone - don't get trampled under hoof!

South Africa and Great Britain

The first of Clapham Common's festivals is a major success

Find out about the other 2009 festivals on Clapham Common by visiting our Clapham Festival 2009 Guide.

Take celebrity Australian chef John Torode, three horses, a flock of sheep and some scantily clad Antipodean dancers. Stick them altogether on Clapham Common, take a photo and BAM! There’s your perfect launch photo for the Toast Festival 2009 this weekend. Update: the competition is now closed, Love Clapham reader Richard Kellow is the lucky winner! Read on to learn about the Toast Festivals.

Toast Festival 2009 is the largest celebration of Australian, New Zealand and South African culture to hit the UK. Toast is taking place on Clapham Common this weekend from Friday 26 June until Sunday 28 June showcasing a huge mix of food, wine, sport and culture.

Best bits include polo matches kicking off each day, BBQs piled high, headlining performances from Sydney dance group Sneaky Sound System and over 200 varieties of New World wine. It’s the perfect taste of life down under, so head down there!

In preparation for Toast, MasterChef judge and Aussie cook John Torode has been busy herding sheep on Clapham Common with the help of two other riders, and dancers from South Africa and New Zealand in traditional dress. It was touch and go as a couple of sheep nearly escaped on to Clapham Highstreet but John managed to round them up in the end.  Not only a top critic on MasterChef ready to pull apart any dish thrown his way, John also looks good on a horse!

John Torode will be at Toast Festival dishing up traditional Aussie fare including BBQ lamb leg, beef party pies and Hokey Pokey ice-cream.

Visit the Toast Festival 2009 website for full information and to book your tickets.

Oh yes people, it’s that time of year again – Clapham festival time! Love Clapham is going totally gaga thinking about the massive partying ahead of us this summer. With Orbital, Super Furry Animals, Eric Prydz and The Human League all paying a trip to Clapham Common to headline, you lovely Clappers are totally spoilt for choice this year. But why choose when you can go to them all?! Read on for Love Clapham’s definitive guide to Clapham’s 2009 festivals.

Clapham is getting quite a name for itself as party central. Scrap that, with a 20,000 person venue (hello Clapham Common) it already is party central. Londoners will pour into our cosy little suburb for music and drinking gallore with no less than eight festivals on Clapham Common in 2009. And what the hell, we’re gonna join them!

Festival essentials

We’re in touch with all of the festival organisers and this page will be updated regularly with loads of useful tips and info related to Clapham’s 2009 festivals, so be sure to save it and visit back often.

• Clapham Common Guide: for info about travel to and from festivals.
• Clapham events: for other events to the big festivals.

Festival schedule

South Africa, New Zealand and Australia all have a healthy serving of residents living in Clapham, so it will come as no surprise that Toast Festival 2009 is a three day festivalathon to cater for all three nations. With Polo, music, mayhem and more it’s a brilliant event. Throw in BBQ’s and wine tasting, and we’re there!

Gay + Clapham = hand-in-hand and as a celebration the local gay Clapper community put on a song and a dance every year on the road next to Kazbar. Drag queens and tonnes of celebs usually turn up to entertain between music and drinking. Plus it’s free, just pay for the booze and enjoy. [More info coming when we're sent it!]

Super Furry Animals are the headline act for the first day of Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common festival. As usual there will be music, frollics, drinking and ice cream, possibly in reverse order (and then repeated).

You love icecream, we love icecream, most of London loves icecream – let’s go back for second helpings at the second day of Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common festival. Tickets have sold out already, but if you nabbed yourself a ticket, you’ll be lucky enough to see the Human League performing.

Probably Clapham’s best known gig, South West Four has a steller line-up this year with Eric Prydz and David Guetta headlining. Yummy.

With a line-up as long as your arm, Get Loaded in the Park is the last Clapham festival of the 2009 season – so you better get your skates on, buy tickets and get us a pint ready when you’re there.

Get Loaded in the Park brings even more festival goodness your way on Bankholiday Sunday 30 August. With no work on Monday there really is no excuse to miss headliners Orbital, Röyksopp and the rest of the acts.

You can still buy tickets from TicketMaster for a mere £35, or opt for a weekend pass to get you into South West Four (SW4) the day before too.

Get Loaded in the Park Line-up

Stonking line-up this year with headliners, other acts and DJ sets below:

• Orbital
• Röyksopp
• Carl Craig Presents Innerzone Orchestra
• Roni Size Reprazent
• Laurent Garnier // Peaches
• Sneaky Sound System // Freeland
• Booka Shade // Miss Kitten & The Hacker
• Magnetic Man feat Skream & Benga
• Esser // Trip // Marina & The Diamonds // Devils Gun

DJ Sets:

• Felix Da Housecat // Pendulum // Crookers
• Chase & Status // Rob Da Bank // Krafty Kuts
• The Count & Sinden // Steve Aoki // The Bloody Beetroots
• Eddy Temple Morris // Junior Sanchez

Visit the Get Loaded in the Park website for further information.

The Ben & Jerry’s icecream machine has gone into full swing for the Ben & Jerry’s Sundae on the Common festival. Tickets are now available to buy for Saturday 25^th July with the Super Furry Animals and Teenage Fanclub headlining the stage. Icecream and fairground rides are also present to help the day along.

Supporting acts include I am Kloot, King Creosote, Marina and the Diamonds, Tommy Reilly and Telegraphs. If the Sunday is anything to go by (which has already sold out), the Saturday tickets won’t be around for long. Tickets are £8.95 plus postage and you can buy them visit from the Ben & Jerry website.

Cian Ciaran of Super Furry Animals comments: ‘We’re looking forward to playing sweet songs from our new album Dark Days/Light Years to the masses at Ben & Jerry’s festival Sundae on The Common!”