LIVE: `Of course, I ignored Michael Eavis's advice'.

JAMIE GILROY IS SCOTLAND'S answer to Michael Eavis - at least, that is what the loyal punters at Wickerman have anointed the sometime farmer.

"My father was a farmer, while the farm here has been in my wife's family for generations," explains Gilroy. "It's a beautiful place - the bottom of the farm extends down to the Solway Firth while the top end goes up into the hills, but it isn't profitable. That's what led to us setting up the festival."

Despite its isolated location at East Kirkcarswell Farm in Dumfries and Galloway, the Wickerman has built a loyal following and is now in its eighth year.

Gilroy admits that a festival was actually the third-choice idea when it came to thinking about how to supplement the farm's income and balance the books.

"It would have been a lot easier to breed pheasants for shooting parties on the land, but a lot of my neighbours already do that - and they do it very well," he says. "The next idea was to develop the lochs and woods for things like pony trekking and mountain biking. But we're 100 miles from Edinburgh, Glasgow or Newcastle and you really need to be within spitting distance of a big city for that kind of thing."

However, when musical director Sid Ambrose approached Gilroy with the idea of creating a festival, the pair latched on to the fact that cult Seventies horror movie The Wicker Man was filmed locally. "I love a good party and I'm a bit of a pyromaniac," grins Gilroy, referring to the festival's burning of a huge wicker model.

Looking back, Gilroy finds it hard to believe how the event has grown in popularity. "We were supposed to hold the first festival in 2001, but foot and mouth broke out and we figured that bringing 10,000 people to the farm would have been irresponsible," he recalls.