Tom Jones gets the crowd singing at T In The Park

It was the opening night of T In The Park 2011, and what a welcome to Balado: a sun-kissed corner of the Scottish countryside where the clouds cleared, Healthy T did a roaring trade, two Thunderbirds enjoyed The View, blue Smurfs rocked to White Lies, glorious sunshine heated up Arctic Monkeys fans, and thousands of T in the Parkers had the time of their lives.

Fancy Dress Friday at T witnessed the now traditional phantasmagorical display of inventive costumery: a burly bloke dressed as a bride, a Slash (from Guns N' Roses), an explosion of day-glo zinc make-up, and a chipper man who looked suspiciously like Welsh music legend Sir Tom Jones. No, wait, actually, it was Sir Tom ' the sprightliest, rock'n'rollest, 71-year-old knight of the realm that Balado has ever seen. Delilah, the Welsh anthem, encouraged Friday evening's loudest main stage singalong.

But T in the Park 2011's first singalong came courtesy of one of Scotland's greatest ever rock bands. Big Country opened proceedings on the main stage with a punchy, 30-minute greatest hits set. Fields Of Fire? It was fields on fire as the Eighties heroes played their first ever T set. For guitarist Bruce Watson, it was especially poignant to be playing on home turf without his old Dunfermline friend and bandmate, the late Stuart Adamson.

' played here with The Skids in 2007,' said Watson, who was joined on stage with his guitarist son Jamie. 'T in the Park is my back garden really ' I'm only ten minutes down the road in Dunfermline, so I'm here every year. This feels like a homecoming show for Big Country ' especially 'cause we never played here the first time round.'

As the sun continued to beat down well into the evening, T in the Parkers were treated to a terrific volley of Day 1 closing acts. Eliza Doolittle rocked her trademark shorts, the pummelling beats of Aussie drum'n'metal heroes Pendulum caused their now-traditional festival earthquake (measuring eight on the rock-ter scale.)? And Arctic Monkeys, firm favourites of the Balado masses, topped their previous, triumphant sets at T with a thundering performance, bringing the first day of T in the Park to an almighty end.

Sir Tom Jones only had good things to say about his debut T experience.

''d heard a lot about T in the Park, and as we were driving in I saw all the punters ' who looked very interesting!' laughed the living legend ' clearly he'd caught sight of the chap dressed as The A Team's Mr T pushing a woman in a wheelchair dressed as Margaret Thatcher. 'They all looked the part anyway! For me this is fantastic ' I don't play many festivals, or haven't done in the past. But this is great ' you see all sorts of people. And nine times out of ten it's a younger crowd. Last year I played Latitude, and I had the Praise & Blame album out, so all I did was songs from that album. And sometimes people could get a bit upset about that, and rightfully so ' they wanna hear some hits as well. This time, at T in the Park, I wasn't gonna make that mistake!'

Well, it's not unusual to hear hit songs from hit artists at Balado. T in the Park 2011 has lift off.

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