Off with a bang: Secret Garden Party returns for the first time since 2016
(Picture: Andrew Whitton)We know hedonism is back — in so much as no one wants to work and everyone’s started smoking again — but group-sex-at-a-festival levels of debauchery? Turns out that yes, we have been that starved of turpitude. Tomorrow, Secret Garden Party is set to return for a 20th-anniversary outing after a five-year hiatus. And with the inclusion of outfits such as the east London queer rave, Crossbreed and international party organisers He.She.They (both of whom are taking over parts of the festival), it has even earned a spot at the forefront of the sex positivity revolution that’s been transforming British club culture in the post-pandemic era.
“We were never sex negative, to be fair,” says Freddie Fellowes, the 44-year-old Old Etonian who founded Secret Garden Party “by accident” in 2002 on a plot of his parents’ land in Cambridgeshire. “People can expect a good classic Garden Party, with all the old fun and games, the hidden stuff, all the freedoms and liberties we’ve always afforded them. We want them to have as much fun as possible.” And true to the naked mud wrestling spirit it was founded in (naked mud wrestling being a signature SGP activity), for its first year back, fun means orgies (well, the theme is ‘All You Need Is Love’).
