It's just 64 days to go until the 2012 Latitude Festival takes place, and more artists have just been added to an already thrusting line-up of performers.

This week's big news is that the Evening Standard’s Beyond Theatre Award winner The Most Incredible Thing is coming to the Riverfront Stage. It's a Sadlers Wells production of a collaboration between Pet Shop Boys and choreographer Javier De Fruto. There's a preview clip below.

For the full list of additions, and to buy tickets, make haste to the Latitude website.

Former Word cover star and scion of Loudon Wainwright and Kate McGarrigle Rufus Wainwright will be providing the Sunday lunchtime entertainment on the Obelisk stage at this year's Latitude Festival. This prestigious slot, which has previously accommodated Tom Jones, Thom Yorke and Joanna Newsom, has been moved back to one p.m. This will allow people to watch Wainwright's show without missing concert pianist Lang Lang's performance on the floating Waterfront Stage, which begins at noon.

The Waterfront Stage will also be playing host to Golden Fables 2012, a multimedia poetic drama which has been devised for the Cultural Olympiad. Taking part will be poets Liz Lochhead, Ian McMillan, Gillian Clarke and Joel Stickley, composers Gabriel Prokofiev and Tim Dalling and the 90-strong Choir Invisible - The Desmond and Leah Tutu Peace Choir and graphic novelist Kate Brown.

To find out more details and book tickets go here.

We're delighted to announce that world-class bluegrass outfit Punch Brothers (a Mossman favourite), Belgian outfit dEUS, Academy Award-winning songwriter Glen Hansard and American band Low plus Breton and Walls have all been added to the bill at Latitude which takes place on July 12th-15th.

To buy tickets for the festival, which already features Bon Iver, Paul Weller, Elbow and Richard Hawley, go here.

We're thrilled to announce that Lana Del Rey, 2012's most talked-about new pop star and the woman behind Video Games, which dominated The Word's Festive Fifty vote in 2011, will be performing on our stage at this year's Latitude Festival.

Other acts announced today include Ben Howard, Dave Gorman, School of Comedy, Sarfarz Manzoor, Simon Armitage, Phenomenal Handclap Band, Twin Primes Theatre Company, Theatre Ad Infinitum, Boogaloo Stu, Checkley Bush, Richard Dedomenici, Oyster Eyes, Christmas For Two, Idiots of Ants, Guilt & Shame, Joel Dommett, Matt Rees, Late Night Gimp Fight, Danny McLoughlin, Nish Kumar and Joe Wells. Meanwhile, in the Faraway Forest, Noise of Art will be entertaining festival-goers with their Psychedelic Curiosity Show, which mashes retro-futuristic steampunk with 60’s psychedelia via the medium of Volkswagen camper-van.

For more information and to purchase tickets, go to www.latitudefestival.co.uk

Latitude and Reading/Leeds promoter Melvin Benn remembers his first event – an anti-Thatcher gig in ’79 featuring Shane MacGowan on a flatbed truck “which surely led to her eventual downfall 11 years later”. There’s the unadulterated chaos of Axl Rose and girlfriend at Reading (the festival he helped save from bankruptcy), memories of Nirvana, the time he and Michael Eavis defended Worthy Farm against anarchists with petrol bombs, and the revelation that promoters can “play God” with the weather conditions.

Latitude is at Henham Park, Suffolk, July 12-15. Tickets from http://www.latitudefestival.co.uk

We're delighted to reveal that we'll be returning to the Latitude Festival this year, which takes place on 12-15 July at Henham Park in Suffolk.

The main stage headliners are Bon Iver, Elbow and Paul Weller, with White Lies, The Horrors and Wild Beasts topping the bill at The Word Arena alongside Metronomy, Battles and Bat For Lashes.

Other artists confirmed so far include Richard Hawley, Lang Lang, Janelle Monae, St Vincent, Tune Yards, The Field, M83, Sharon van Etten, Yeasayer, Zola Jesus, Michael Kiwanuka, Lianne La Havas, Alabama Shakes, Jonathan Wilson, Josh T Pearson, Kurt Vile, Daryl Hall, Other Lives, The War On Drugs, Wooden Ships, Simple Minds, Laura Marling, Buena Vista Social Club, Metronomy, SBTRKT, Tim Minchin, Amadou & Mariam and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros.

Elsewhere on the bill you'll find Brian Cox, Robin Ince, Jack Dee, Reginald D Hunter, Greg Davies, Rich Hall, Russell Kane, Lee Nelson, the National Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, Siri Hustvedt, Iain Banks, John Pilger, Paul Mason, Benjamin Zephaniah, Tony Harrison, John Cooper Clarke, Scroobius Pip, Paul Heaton, Alan Moore, Mark Lamarr and Adam Buxton. More acts will be announced later.

Also new for this year is the Tour de Latitude, in which cyclists will be peddling their way to the festival from various parts of the country, with ice baths and massages available upon arrival. Word editor Mark Ellen will be joining the tour in Hackney to cycle the 113 miles to the festival site. You can register here if you'd like to take part.

Tickets are now on sale.

Was my mistaken interpretation of a comment made on one of the Latitude podcasts the first example of a Word mag Mondegreen (eg 'Scuse me while I kiss this guy)?

When discussing Fraser's unfortunate trip to Latitude medical services on the 'cast, I remain convinced that the Ed referred to his misfortune as "a beasting" and I was held rapt for several minutes of my afternnon walk musing on what sort of public school bullying indignity had been served on our Antipodean roadkill gourmet and North Korean Tourism Board representative.

It was only when reading the actual factual sub copy of the mag last week that I realised that my ear trumpet requires de-gunging and that Mr Digital had merely suffered "a bee sting". Phew.

Just wanted to say thanks to the team for the Latitude CD. Very nice to have a themed tie in. Having 2 CDs that month was an added bonus.

From a packed Word Lounge at Latitude, Andrew Harrison is joined by Stuart Maconie and Louise Wener to look back at Britpop: why it happened, what is was like, and where it all went wrong. Subjects covered include the secret meeting at which Britpop was invented, life at Camden's Good Mixer pub, drugs, Blur vs Oasis, and how The Spice Girls came along and ruined it for everyone. As an added audio bonus, you'll also hear an impromptu duet from Louise and Andrew on Queen's We Are The Champions.

The podcast is available to podcast app users now and will be available via this website, through iTunes and other channels tomorrow.

You can follow this link to get the podcast every week. For more details on our podcast app, click here.

And if you enjoyed these live podcasts from Latitude, seats are still available for our Word On The Water event next weekend, which features just such a recording, plus a live set from C.W. Stoneking. Tickets are available here.

Back from Latitude and had a great time, the kids loved it, but the organisers really should hold their heads in shame as there were a lot of very unhappy campers around.

We had friends who had no water on their campsite for virtually the whole weekend, which certainly tested their patience. Apparently H&S said the water wasn't good enough and no solution was found.

We were on the family campsite, which didn't take long to turn into a quagmire, which the organisers didn't really seem to be too bothered about. To see families trying to push prams through 6-10 inches of mud makes any claims to be a family-friendly festival sound fairly hollow. I saw a lot of young families packing up and going home on Saturday lunchtime and I can't really blame them.

No effort was made to make the main route from the family camping to the toilets and the festival more manageable. If they weren't willing to fork out for tracks, then surely some straw or chippings would have been possible?

We drove out yesterday at about 9pm and we saw cars getting stuck left, right and centre. The only help that seemed to be on hand was a couple of young lads whose advice was "just put your foot down and hope for the best". Great! I wouldn't be surprised if people were still trying to get out now.

As for the festival itself, the site itself held up pretty well. We popped into the Word tent on Saturday and everyone including Messers Hepworth, Mossman, Lewery and others were sat round tables chatting and nobody acknowledged us or said hello. After five minutes of standing there, we walked out and my wife said "well, that was s**t". All felt a bit, dare I say it, cliquey!

Apart from that, we had a great weekend. Not sure I would go again though; it ain't cheap and to expect campers to go four days without any water is expecting a little bit much of people.

Did anyone else go, and what did you think?

The third of this year's Latitude podcasts, recorded at the Word Lounge at the festival, is amongst you. First up, Absolute Radio's Geoff Lloyd talks David Hepworth and Mark Ellen through the pain of losing his record collection and reveals a genuine piece of backsgage gossip involving lots of mud, some borrowed wood, and Seasick Steve. In parts two and three, recorded yesterday, we hear from I Am Kloot's John Bramwell and Australian/American vintage bluesman C.W. Stoneking.

The podcast is available to podcast app users now and will be available via this website, through iTunes and other channels tomorrow.

You can follow this link to get the podcast every week. For more details on our podcast app, click here.

And if you enjoyed Stoneking's performance, seats are still available to see him perform at our Word On The Water event next weekend. Buy tickets here.

In the second podcast from Latitude, Robin Ince joins us in the Word lounge to talk about Mills & Boon, buying a record only to find the musician in question operating the till, being bullied by Ricky Gervais, his first Glastonbury, why Robert Smith should never be a crowd marshall and working with Brian Cox. Plus the chaps from They Might Be Giants talk to David Hepworth and answer audience questions about set lists, stuffing envelopes and the difficulties involved in doing a children's record about history.

The podcast is available to podcast app users now and will be available via this website, through iTunes and other channels tomorrow.

You can follow this link to get the podcast every week. For more details on our podcast app, click here.

In the first of a few podcasts recorded in the Word "Lounge" at Latitude, Britain's premier poet Simon Armitage (far right) talks to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth about why Bob Dylan, although a Very Good Thing, is not actually a poet, the desirability of calling your band The Wheelie Bins, seeing the Bay City Rollers in Queens Hall, Leeds, what he thinks of Jim Morrison and why you can't just take one of his poems and set it to music. As a bonus on this podcast you get K.T. Tunstall talking about the challenges of playing festivals and answering audience questions about playing Anne Frank.

The podcast is available to podcast app users now and will be available via this website, through iTunes and other channels later today.

You can follow this link to get the podcast every week. For more details on our podcast app, click here.

If you're attending the Latitude Festival this weekend, you'll know who's playing at the Word Arena (marked with the yellow arrow on the left of the map, below): The Vaccines, Lyle Lovett, Caribou, Echo & The Bunnymen, Bellowhead, Lykke Li, OMD, Os Mutantes and many more.

But that's not all. Eagle-eyed readers examining the topography above will already have noticed a second yellow arrow, one that points enticingly at the location of a second, previously unknown Word tent.

This is The Word Lounge, an intimate setting under canvas where we'll be hosting a series of live events, including Q&As and performances from a number of artists performing elsewhere at the festival. We'll also be recording our very first live-in-front-of-an-audience podcasts. Confirmations* so far include K.T. Tunstall, Simon Armitage, C.W. Stoneking, I Am Kloot, They Might Be Giants, Louise Wener and Stuart Maconie, the latter two recording a special Britpop podcast with Andrew Harrison. Other names will follow, and while we're not absolutely sure what time people will be joining us, festival attendees should keep their eyes open for posters we'll be putting up around the site with complete schedule details.

Otherwise, just come and say hello, as we'll all be there.

*List of names correct at the time of posting, but liable to change. Or maybe it won't. Who knows?

Well it is chucking it down, but next weekend is Latitude and I am getting excited. And worried about the weather forcast.

Who else is going apart from the Word Crew?

And has anyone got the train back on the Sunday before? I have to be in London for work on Sunday night (dammit) while the family can continue enjoying the festival till Monday.