Alex Zane provides Comic Relief at Wharfstock

How many times have you wandered out for a night in a financial metropolis and picked up a new circus skill?

A half hour or so after first wading into the cluster of creativity that was Wharfstock, festival host Alex Zane had added another party trick to his arsenal.

The XFM and T4 presenter said: "I could more or less juggle with three balls before, but apparently four isn't really that much more difficult. You just have two in each hand and they never cross."

Alex joined several musicians in answering the call of Comic Relief on Friday night. The well-known TV personality supplied the quips in a night of guitars, dance and comedy. And the drinks were at least flowing a little more freely than the last time he showed up.

He said: "I once did some shooting near Billingsgate, and I foolishly thought that bankers worked 24 hours, so I spent ages wandering around looking for a bar that was open at 9.30am."

Wharfstock was billed as an attempt to re-capture the spirit of Woodstock 40 years on. But was there any band from the original festival that Alex would have liked to have seen on stage?

He said: "I would love to have seen Jimi Hendrix. But then I'd love to have seen any dead rock star. I have this thing where if I'm denied anything, I want it more."

The former Popworld presenter has covered festivals such as V and Wireless for armchair music fans. But what does he have in his own CD player?

He said: "I pride myself in owning the worst album by nearly every band I've liked.

"Generally, a band would release a fantastic album and I'd hear some of it on a mix-tape and rush out and buy the next one. I own most bands' difficult second albums.

"I turned 30 last week so I'm looking at my past through rose-tinted glasses. I could live through the summer of '95 again and again. Music's in a really healthy place right now, but we don't have a unifying music scene like that. Britpop was on the cover of The Sun. It seems like yesterday but it was over ten years ago.

"One of my favourite songs is Shampoo's Trouble and I'll listen to that at least once most days. I was also massively into Chumbawumba. I had a weird dream recently about Alice Nutter from Chumbawumba the other night. She was fooling around, but when someone pulled back the duvet she was just the top half of a mannequin."

As the host of the Orange Unsigned Act talent contest, he's seen many hopefuls battle for the attention of judges such as Blur's Alex James, and many of them have sought him out for a helping hand.

He said: "Every day I get sent ten to 20 tracks from new bands and I go to their Myspace site and listen to them.

"I kind of embrace Myspace but at the same time I'm scared of it. There's so much good music out there and it upsets me to think that there are good bands out there that can't get signed. But the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen were the last two acts to really come through that route, and now it's a bit saturated.

"The sad thing for me is that the music industry is based on trends and that often over-rules finding good music. It takes a really savvy person to hear something, say "that's genius" and really put the time in.

"I'd recommend building up a fan base the old way, by going out, playing shows and getting your music out there. There's a band called Flamboyant Bella, who haven't released any albums yet but their shows always sell out because they've just gigged and gigged and built up a fan base.

"Bands need to revert back from the digital age and just get out there and play gigs."