PORT Eliot Festival at St Germans has been described, as the Radio 4 of festivals and it’s easy to see why.

Set in the stunning grounds of Port Eliot House, the festival just oozes class. Middle class that is.

And I don’t mean that in a negative way. What’s wrong with a festival that combines, food, literature, music and a chilled ambience?

People are polite to each other, there is intelligent conversation, and there is no lairy drunkenness (although people are very merry).

On Thursday evening I ease myself in with a heavy psych monster set from The Trembling Bells with Lavina Blackwall’s cut glass vocals a perfect counterpoint to the prog workouts combined with folk rock perfection.

On Saturday, Stephen Duffy of The Lilac Time is amusing in the bucolic Walled Garden on why he never reads books. In the Bowling Green tent, Patrick Woodroffe, lighting designer for The Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga and the opening ceremony for Olympics, is interviewed by music journalist Mark Ellen and tells amusing tales of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and the Queen having to hide from the crowd during the helicopter sequence.

Movingly he reads from his diaries about working with Michael Jackson on preparations for the final tour that never was and being the last person to speak to him before he died.

I went to this year’s festival thinking the music line-up wasn’t as strong as previous years, but how wrong I was.

While there were a number of polite folkies, Villagers, The Lilac Time and sadly Ezra Furman, whose hype didn’t really excite, there were a number of exciting new discoveries.

The first of these was Portuguese, UK hybrid Fumaca Preta. A bald guitarist sporting a Flying V, cape and trashing a Hammond type organ, a prowling bassist in a cloud covered onesie and insanely cool drummer singer and percussionist.

They truly defied classification combining fuzz rock acid guitar, heavy metal riffs, funky tropicala, Brazilian rhythms and a punk attitude. They were jaw droppingly good.

After this The Archie Bronson Outfit had to pull out all the stops to make an impression, and they did with knobs on.

Their wall of sound, garage art rock became trancelike as the set progressed. Never letting up with the intensity, the band prompted the first, and as far as I know, the only stage invasion of the festival.

The sight of a rotund, middle-aged man in glasses gyrating from the tent pole on the stage is indelibly etched on my mind.

Uber DJ Andrew Weatherall rounded of the evening and had the packed tent throwing shapes for the rest of the night.

Saturday offered best selling authors Patrick Gale and Susan Waters, feminist journalist Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Alan Johnson reading from his autobiography.

Popular Guardian columnist Tim Dowling is as funny in person as he is in words (and much better looking than his picture according to many women in the audience).

Saturday night music wise was a treat. Welsh Cornish electronica artist Gwenno was engaging both musically and personally but was the build up to the main event: Jane Weaver whose prog rock electronica set was stunning.

Hailing from Sweden, Australia and Sweden, Kid Wave’s debt to Dinosaur Jr was obvious but with husky half spoken vocals from Lea Emmery and harmonies from phenomenal drummer Serra Petale this was the feel good set of the festival.

Sunday was a day of rest, with multi-platinum songwriter Crispin Hunt scaborously funny about working with artists such as Florence and the Machine, Rhianna, Ellie Goulding and Jake Bugg and turning down the chance to work with Ed Sheeran.

The main event of the day, and the festival for me was Remembered For a While: A Companion to Nick Drake, with his sister, actor Gabrielle Drake and the book’s art director Cally Calloman.

It was an incredibly incredibly emotional hour and a half with Daisy Vaughan’s performance of Nick’s Clothes of Sand in Spanish using Nick’s original guitar particularly moving.

Port Eliot is unique and long may it prosper, and pray that the rumours that this was the last are not true.