Rag 'n' Bone Man enjoys "one of the best days of my life" at Glastonbury

The 32-year-old, who is from Uckfield, appeared on the festival’s Other Stage and sang hits from his chart-topping debut album Human to a huge crowd. The star, real name Rory Graham, played a few hours before Sunday headliner Ed Sheeran took to the stage in Somerset.

A visibly overwhelmed Graham said: “This is crazy. I can’t really believe I’m standing here to be honest… someone’s going to tell me it’s a mistake. You don’t know what it means for us to be here.”

In similar scenes to Jeremy Corbyn’s appearance at the festival a day earlier, the audience stretched far beyond the allotted crowd space.

Festivalgoer Steve Walton was one spectator looking on from afar. “Crowd is so big that we [are] watching Rag ’n’ Bone Man from the road,” he tweeted. “Good view, apart from dodging bin vans and tractors.”

The singer is expecting a baby with his girlfriend of eight years Beth Rouy and he referenced this while addressing the Glastonbury crowd. He said: “I get to tell my baby when he grows up that I was doing this.”

The singer later posed for a photograph with his adoring audience and said the reaction to his stripped-down piano version of his song Skin was “the most beautiful sound I have ever heard”.

The slot at the UK’s biggest festival capped a whirlwind year so far for the man who was named British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards, where he also received the Critics’ Choice Award. Human hit number one in the charts upon its release in February. Graham lived in Brighton for a number of years before moving to London but he is now settled in his birthplace Uckfield.

“I lived in London for a few years but I liked Sussex too much,” he told The Argus last year. “I can’t live without a pint of Harvey’s. At the moment it’s so busy, there’s so much going on, that it’s nice to be able to come back to somewhere nice and quiet that isn’t part of that other world.

“It’s that degree of separation – this is work life, this is home life.”