So it transpires that football isn’t the only thing that the Portuguese are superior at. Music festivals can also be added to the (somewhat extensive) list.

   Optimus Alive festival is a three-day heavy rock affair in Alges, up-town Lisbon. The line-up was a failsafe combination of Florence & The Machine, Kasabian, Manic Street Preachers, Pearl Jam, Deftones, Faith No More, Jet and LCD Soundsystem. The temperature wasn’t predicted to drop below thirty degrees. There was going to be free Iced Tea. I was sold.

   So frequently in the UK festivals are much more enjoyable in advance than in the grim mud-soaked, piss-stained, beer-saturated reality. Festivals such as Glastonbury and T in the Park, costing around £200 per ticket, have gone from being lairy gatherings of over-excited music lovers to magnets for every wannabe indie kid and irritant poser under the age of 20. Those who would be content with taking amphetamines with WKD in a field for five days without seeing a single band are in the vast majority. No matter how good the line-up, I find it hard to concentrate on the immense experience of the music past the near-uncontrollable urge to line the rest of the crowd up against a wall and shoot them with air guns.

   Enter the foreign festival. Enter Optimus Alive.

   Firstly, it’s unbelievably clean. Even on the third day, pre-Pearl Jam, on a Saturday, when the queues for the portaloos (which were really more like clever portable communal bathrooms) demanded a fifteen-minute wait, they were nothing less than spotless and full of clean toilet paper. Seeing Pearl Jam without having to attempt the notorious “hover” manoeuvre to avoid syphilis, was mind-blowing.

   Secondly, the people were awesome. I mean genuinely awesome. The people who you would seek out at parties. That no one was visibly paralytic and/or throwing glasses of their own urine over parts of the crowd was instantly a step up from previous British experiences. But everyone I met while there had brilliant stories of musical escapades to tell; Madrid to see Bon Jovi, Rome to see U2, a row of Deftones fans racing Manics fans to the main stage barrier. Great scenes.

   The atmosphere is electric but never tips over into aggressiveness. Seeing siblings looking after their eleven-year-old brother near the back of the main stage whilst sipping pints of beer during Pearl Jam was particularly touching. At the front it was lairy but self-contained; even the mosh-pits were exhilarating rather than a desperate struggle to keep your femurs intact.

   It’s romantic, maybe naïve, to want British festivals to retain this sense of fun, this sense of wonder, without the cheap posturing and exhibitionism. But at least there’s always the chance to go overseas, which, when the combined cost of both the flight and weekend ticket comes to less than a Glastonbury or Reading/Leeds ticket alone, is a lot more affordable than you’d think.

   Lisbon, Germany, Spain, even Belgium. They all beat the British festivals in this Champions League.

Once again, due to my habit of intentionally ignoring everything NME has to say with fingers in my ears and a loud, ‘Blah blah blah, The Skids, blah blah blah…’ I have been rather slow on the uptake with this band, but bear with me.

   I first stumbled across them supporting Florence & The Machine at Hammersmith Apollo.  They were preceded by an almost 50s-style scene with an outbreak of banshee screaming and one girl behind me, fanning herself in preparation for lead singer Jonathan Pierce to come onstage, exclaiming with no hint of irony, ‘Oh he’s so dreamy!’ By the time they came on my eyebrows had almost disappeared into my fringe in disbelief, especially when the legendary Johnny finally entered the stage, dressed like someone doing ‘dandy schoolboy’ in a satirical play with a haircut so retro I questioned whether it could be real.

   Once they started playing however, in a charming and raw style that bought to mind an optimistic and camp version of Joy Division, I not only started to like them, but I started to find Johnny inexplicably attractive within about three songs. By the end of their set I may have even flailed while saying, ‘Oh, I love him!’ On the one hand there’s his dancing, which alternates between an Ian Curtis-esque shuffle and a flourish of Adam Ant-style posturing. While part of you wants to dismiss him as a tragic indie car crash, a more overwhelming part of you knows that he’s cool enough to get away with it. On the other hand though there is his singing, which is undeniably strong, able to express both irony and charm.

   Then there is the issue of their stage door persona, a tripping point for any band, where an arrogant attitude or a snappy comment can put me off a band’s music for life. I saw his fringe before I saw him, and hoped that someone else would stop him considering I didn’t know his name at the time and I wanted a smoother opener than, ‘Guy from the drums!’  Luckily someone obliged and Johnny took a round of obligatory photos before I chipped in with a devastatingly cool, ‘Excuse me…’ I am glad to say that, despite the onstage strut, he was one of the most polite musicians I have ever met. Upon my camera breaking he insisted on waiting until we had got a photo I was happy with, even offering to fix it while his arm was still around me. Allow me a moment to sigh…

   After the gig I bought their recent EP, Summertime! It comes across as the polar opposite of their live sound, but that is no bad thing. Songs like Let’s Go Surfing, Make You Mine and Best Friend (from their Best Friend EP) sound like they were produced on a jaunty, aged 60s record. Live they sounded like a hyperactive 80s throwback, torn between punk and cheesy pop. Johnny’s energy is contained in a way that it can’t be onstage, but the effect is a blissful, upbeat and surprisingly original record.

   The real star of the show is the last track of the EP, I Felt Stupid. It’s a song that could have leapt straight from a musical, like Hairspray or Grease, only…decent. It’s almost unbearably charming, but so touching and sincere it’s hard not to succumb to visions of Johnny, in his rolled-up trousers and white socks, singing ‘I don’t know if it’s right or wrong but come stay with me, I wanna hear every beat of your heart’ to you across a US diner…or maybe that’s just me, but you get my point.

   The Drums are playing two nights at Heaven, London, in early June. Go. They’re lovely, captivating live, have two very strong EPs, and the tickets on Ebay are reasonably priced. Please, do go.

PS - Sorry for the extended break. It will never happen again, cross my heart…