THE greatest names and some of music’s most exciting new acts rocked Victorious Festival this weekend.

And organisers have confirmed that after opening up the whole seafront site for all three days for the first time, this was the biggest year so far in the event’s ten-year history.

Up to 70,000 people each day were on Southsea Common to see headliners, including Mumford and Sons and Johnny Marr, who appeared after Ellie Goulding, The Vaccines and The Enemy.

That followed a shock and awe performance from Kasabian and Kaiser Chiefs on Saturday and a huge funk and acid jazz infusion from legendary stars Jamiroquai on Friday.

Kasabian, now reinvented with songwriter Serge Pizzorno fronting the band, brought killer tracks from seven albums including Club Foot, You’re in Love With A Pyscho and L.S.F.

Meanwhile, Jamiroquai celebrated 30 years since their debut number one album Emergency on Planet Earth, with big-hatted frontman Jay Kay showing why his band were the third top selling act of the Nineties after The Spice Girls and Oasis.

Nottingham kingpin Jake Bugg returned to the south coast for the first time since last year’s headline set at Southampton Guildhall, and drew a huge audience with a mix of acoustic and full band tracks, and fingerprints on almost every music genre.

Southampton’s Pioneers and Callum Lintott both performed, while fellow local act Crystal Tides completed a summer of festival appearances with three sets, including opening the second Castle Stage on both Saturday and Friday.

Frontman Billy Gregory told the Daily Echo: “We’d always said The Castle Stage is where we want to be, and we were lucky to achieve it twice this weekend.”

Bassist George Reagan added: “It was a massive step up, that stage is huge! It has been a dream to have had an opportunity to prove that our songs can fill an arena that size.”

On Saturday, while Victorious’ first secret set saw pop legends McFly take to the stage, special afternoon guest Natalie Imbruglia told how she had been “chomping at the bit” to play a full set at Victorious after their equipment had failed to arrive at an event the day before.

Other acts included The Charlatans, Raye, Pete Tong Ibiza Classics, Liverpool’s rising stars Stone and Stockport indie kings Blossoms, whose lead singer Tom Ogden revealed his first visit to Southsea Common has been more than 20 years ago, “kicking a football around” when visiting his father who was then serving in the Royal Navy.