In person: Helen Chalmers, Festival co-ordinator

Her bckground in farming was good preparation for Helen Chalmers' role running the Wickerman Music Festival

CO-ORDINATING a music festival must be a blast, right? Hanging out with all the stars, getting a prime spot backstage for all the best performances ..."I don't get to see many of the acts," says Helen Chalmers, the 30-year-old co-ordinator of the Wickerman festival in Dumfriesshire. What? Does that mean there will be no exchanging fashion tips with The Noisettes' Shingai Shoniwa this year? Or coming over all retromental with Echo And The Bunnymen? "I stayed back last year to see the changeover between The Go! Team and Ocean Colour Scene," she laments, "but, really, I'm stuck in an office, which is a static caravan at the other end of the field."

Fortunately, Chalmers is no stranger to roughing it in a muddy field. She started her career at the tender age of 12, as an "envelope-stuffer and photocopier" for the company running the Perth Agricultural Show, before going on to study agriculture at Aberdeen University.

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"I grew up on farms," she says, "and I suppose I had hoped to work on the family farm one day but circumstances changed and there weren't an awful lot of jobs in the industry at that time that I was particularly interested in."

So in 2003, after doing various jobs, which included working for Woolworth's and laying concrete, the events company she had worked for all those years ago in Perth offered her a position helping with a fledgling music festival in Dumfries and Galloway. It might, at first sight, seem an odd choice for a woman who, by her own admission, hadn't exactly been a veteran of the festival circuit.

"I never thought I'd end up organising a music festival," she confesses. "Wickerman was the first festival I'd been to, but since working there I've been to a number of different events. And I'm hoping to go to Glastonbury this year."

In fact, these days even her holidays tend to be of the busman's variety. "It's quite sad to admit that if we are going somewhere for a break, it's quite often built around visiting another festival or going to a gig. Last week we went to London for a few days which just happened to coincide with Suede playing Dog Man Star in its entirety at Brixton Academy.

"I love cooking for friends and going out to eat - my clubbing days are over," she adds, "and I like to read books that I can devote a day or a couple of days to. They generally have to be little bit dark and make me laugh out loud.

"Oh, and does online shopping count as a hobby?"

Yes, Helen, it does.

In 2007 she took over running Wickerman, and now arranges everything from booking the acts for the main stage to organising the fencing, catering and the toilets ("there is no one more passionate about his job than the guy who services our toilets", she says proudly).

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Raised in Inverarity, near Forfar, Chalmers moved north - to Ullapool - for a man. "I used to live in Perth but I met Robert (Hicks - he's a promoter up here and at the time was involved in RockNess and Belladrum, along with having a share in a pub and restaurant in the village) who wasn't so keen on moving away, so I relocated my office here. It's a bit of a distance to the festival site, but I bought a Mark II Golf GTi last year so it's a great drive."

She arranges the whole thing from her base there arriving in Dundrennan just over a week before the start of the festival to co-ordinate everything on site. "When I first started working at the festival we used to be in tents in the field; now I stay in a house, but I don't get much sleep anyway. You're usually going home at about 3am or 4am and then you're up again at 7am for breakfast meetings. You're kind of running on adrenaline."

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And what do the rockers run on? Has she had any strange rider requests? "Probably the worst part is when you get them late in the day because we are quite remote," she says. "There was some herbal medicine required last year. But the funniest one was a few years ago and somebody's rider was champagne. They said, 'No Moet, no showy. No Chandon, no show on.' Which we thought was quite funny.

"But really, it's the usual things. People want vodka or lager or whatever. We have one band that play in the Scooter Tent: Root System. They're like a house band now, really, and they just ask for a bottle of tequila and some Haribo. And that's them as happy as Larry." n

The Wickerman Festival, 22 and 23 July, East Kirkcarswell Farm, Dundrennan, Dumfries and Galloway, tickets from 30 if you bring your own caravan, to 565 for a luxury tipi that sleeps up to six (0844 884 2920, www.thewickermanfestival.co.uk

This article was originally published in the Scotland on Sunday June 7 2011