WATCH: Trailer for Mo Bhig Fat Dirty Féile

The show, which will be broadcast on RTE One on October 31 at 6.30PM, will have various contributors giving anecdotes about the classic festivals of Ireland.

Festivals didn’t always start out as music festivals. The Carnsore Festival originated as a mass protest against the building of a nuclear power plant in the area. But of course, somebody always brings a guitar along and all the makings of a music festival began at that very same protest.

Around this time, Chuck Berry was causing ructions at The Boys of Ballisodare Festival which ran from 1977 to 1982 in Sligo. Philip King, of Scullion and Other Voices fame, recalls Chuck turning up in a limo and tells of how...’the window went down 3 or 4 inches, the cash went in, the window went up... Chuck got out!’ The same festival was famous for its T-shaped tent... the original ‘T in the Park’ you could say!

But the daddy of all Irish festivals was Lisdoonvarna in Co.Clare. Paul Brady, Planxty and Séamus Ennis performed there down the years from 1978 to 1983. It came to an abrupt halt in 1983 following the tragic drowning of 8 young festival-goers in Doolin, which coincided with trouble from a biker gang at the festival. The locals had had enough!

Féile ran from 1990 to 1997 and was one of the first festivals for young people according to Fiachna Ó Braonáin of Hot House Flowers fame. Tom Dunne describes the scenes as he was driving through Thurles on his way to perform there as being like ‘the fall of Rome’.

The age of so called innocence came to an end with the birth of the mega festivals like Witness - which became Oxegen - and then Electric Picnic.

The show strips back the B.A.R.E in the Woods Festival in Portarlington, Co. Laois, to see what goes on behind the scenes in the weeks leading up to the festival and on the day itself. It captures the disbelief of Hip hop legends The Sugarhill Gang when they realise their VIP green room is the drawing room of what could be “the big house” in Glenroe! There will be interviews with the festival hosts, including retired judge James O’Sullivan and his wife Pauline or ‘Polly’ - parents of one of the 4 organisers of this pocket-sized festival held in their own back garden !

While B.A.R.E in the Woods has been a success, the show looks at some of the challenges of throwing a festival, epitomised in the fact that the Ravelóid festival this year was scaled back from a 2 day camping event to Ravelóid in the City!

As the festival season comes to an end, Mo Bhig Fat Dirty Féile looks back nostalgically and takes the words of Philip King to heart : ‘Nobody should go through their lives without having waved their freak flag high at a festival.’

The show will be presented by Daráine Mulvihill and will have contributions from Philip King, Tom Dunne, Fiachna Ó Braonáin, Nadine O’Regan, Bernie Ní Fhlatharta.