The best-organised event of the festival season got under way at its two sites in Chelmsford, Essex, and Staffordshire on Saturday. In an effort to spice up its smart but safe image, the festival’s organisers had this year booked several acts with a slightly more “edgy” reputation than the norm – a little too edgy in the case of Amy Winehouse, who had pulled out the day before to nurse her celebrated problems. But Babyshambles were on hand to supply a welcome frisson of unpredictability. They started punctually – only V Festival can do this – and played with their usual air of ramshackle defiance. Goaded by some lads at the front, Pete Doherty threw his guitar into the crowd. It didn’t come back.

“Can we get paid now?” he asked, when told it was time to finish, and then launched into a final erratic swing through F*** Forever. They didn’t quite get the plug pulled on them, but it was a close-run thing.

The reconstituted Happy Mondays made a surprisingly respectable showing. Shaun Ryder applied himself with untypical zeal to new songs and old favourites alike. But the enduring image of the set was still that of him sitting on the drum riser chugging beer and smoking a fag while much of the work went on around him.

Ryder was one of many superannuated stars on hand to relive past glories for today’s multi-generational festival-goers. Jarvis Cocker sounded like the Ancient Mariner as he recalled playing the first V Festival in 1996 with Pulp; in Neptune, Glenn Tilbrook sang about burying the hatchet with Chris Difford, his songwriting partner from Squeeze; and the Proclaimers marched through their evergreen folk-pop with flinty resolve, if a reduced spring in their step.

But the 75,000 fans who had tromped on to the site at Hylands Park were looking for action on a grander scale and it was noticeable as night fell, together with a thin drizzle, how the audiences at most of the smaller stages thinned out as the crowd gravitated towards the big attractions. “Just give me the money,” sang Pink, brushing off a potential suitor in her song You and Your Hand. But the message chimed a little too well with her slick, spiky, calculated brand of arena-rock. Snow Patrol’s mellifluous tunes and grandiose production were, as ever, perfectly tailored for the occasion, and their performance confirmed with rather wearying predictability why they have become the most overexposed act on this year’s outdoor calendar.

But it was Foo Fighters who eventually delivered the goods with a masterclass in the necessarily muscular art of festival headlining. The band, led by Dave Grohl, its singer and guitarist, had already played an unannounced lunch-time set on one of the other stages, a popular gesture and smart preparation for the main event. From the opening caress of Everlong, which Grohl sang with a sweet, aching sense of anticipation, to the closing, pummelling spiral of All My Life, which he roared like a wounded lion, the band performed with consummate skill, ferocious intensity and a palpable air of destiny.

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