Madness in Concert at Thetford Forest: Why This Was One of the Best Nights of 2022
By Lee Blanchflower, Blanc Creative | Music Photography & Festival Video Production
There are gigs, and then there are nights you genuinely do not forget. Madness in concert at Thetford Forest’s High Lodge on the 18th of June 2022 was very much the latter.
As the closing headline act for Forestry England’s Forest Live series, the Nutty Boys brought everything you’d want from a summer evening with seven of the most reliably brilliant live performers this country has ever produced.
I was there as a music photographer with Blanc Creative, capturing the night for our growing festival and live events portfolio. It’s the kind of commission that reminds you exactly why you got into this work in the first place.
Forest Live: The Setting That Changes Everything
Before we even get to the band, it’s worth talking about what Forest Live actually is, because it’s genuinely unlike any other concert series in the UK.
Organised by Forestry England, Forest Live takes major touring artists and places them in the middle of working forests across the country.
High Lodge at Thetford Forest sits in the heart of one of England’s largest lowland pine forests, spanning nearly 19,000 hectares across Norfolk and Suffolk. When the stage lights warm up against that backdrop and you’ve got pine trees lining the horizon in every direction, it creates something that no arena or festival field can replicate.
What makes it even better is the crowd it attracts. Forest Live is one of the most genuinely diverse and relaxed concert experiences going. You’ll find grandparents next to teenagers, families spread out on picnic blankets with proper food and a bottle of wine, groups of friends who’ve been coming for years, and first-timers who don’t quite know what to expect until it hits them all at once. There’s no aggression, no overcrowding, no feeling that you need to fight for space.
People lay out their picnics early, stake out a patch on the grass and just settle in for the evening.
The food offering around the site is decent too, covering the basics well and letting the whole thing feel properly relaxed rather than rushed.
It’s family-friendly without being sanitised. It’s communal without being chaotic.
For a music photographer, the atmosphere produces genuine emotion across the crowd, and that’s what makes for compelling images.
A Two-Year Wait Well Worth It
Madness were originally booked to play this very stage in 2020. Covid shut that down, as it did so much else. When the show was finally confirmed for the summer of 2022, there was already an extra charge in the air before anyone had played a note.
That kind of anticipation is palpable, and it ran right through the Forest Live crowd from the moment gates opened.
Fresh from the Isle of Wight Festival, Madness arrived at High Lodge to a sold-out crowd and, characteristically, wasted absolutely no time.
The show opened with One Step Beyond, and the effect was immediate. The fezzes went on. The pork pie hats came out.
The blow-up saxophones appeared from nowhere. Whatever the weather had been doing moments before ceased to matter.
Madness in Concert: Forty-Plus Years and Still the Real Thing
It’s worth pausing on what Madness actually are, because familiarity can make people take them for granted.
The band formed in Camden Town in 1976, originally under the name the North London Invaders. By 1978 they’d settled on Madness, named after a Prince Buster song they loved, and by 1979 they were releasing records on 2 Tone and climbing the charts.
One Step Beyond, their debut album, went to number two. What followed was one of the most remarkable runs in British pop history, with 15 top ten singles including House of Fun, their only number one, Baggy Trousers, It Must Be Love, Our House, and My Girl.
They spent 214 weeks in the singles charts across the early 1980s. Two Ivor Novello Awards.
A West End musical, Our House, that won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical in 2003.
The classic seven-piece lineup is Suggs on vocals, Mike Barson on keyboards, Chris Foreman on guitar, Lee Thompson on saxophone, Dan Woodgate on drums, Mark Bedford on bass, and Chas Smash on vocals and trumpet.
That lineup, more or less intact, is what turned up at Thetford Forest on a June evening in 2022. After 45-plus years together, they remain genuinely extraordinary live.
The Support Acts
Support on the night came from two acts who both earned their place on the bill. The Farm, the Liverpool band formed in 1983, have one of the more remarkable backstories in British music.
Their 1990 album Spartacus went to number one, carried by two top ten singles in Groovy Train and All Together Now, the latter built around Pachelbel’s Canon and inspired by the 1914 Christmas Day truce on the Western Front.
What makes the connection particularly fitting for a Madness show is that Suggs himself produced the Spartacus album, so there’s a genuine history between these two acts that goes back over three decades.
They remain a seriously good live band and warmed the
Thetford crowd up well. Emily Capell, the North London based singer-songwriter, opened the evening.
Drawing on influences that range from Dolly Parton to The Clash, she mixes country, ska and doo-wop into something that’s entirely her own.
She won the Jools Holland Best Newcomer award in 2018 and had already done support slots with Madness prior to this show, so she was comfortable on a big outdoor stage and it showed.
The Set, Song by Song
After One Step Beyond cracked the night open, Madness moved straight into Embarrassment, then The Prince, NW5, and My Girl in quick succession.
The set drew freely from across their catalogue, covering the big hits without ever feeling like a conveyor belt. This is a band who actually enjoy playing live, and that enjoyment is visible from every angle.
Not everything went entirely to plan, and it’s worth being honest about that because of how well it was handled.
A male at the front barrier had been persistent from early in the set, heckling repeatedly through the opening songs.
Suggs, to his credit, did what any seasoned professional would: he kept going, kept the energy up, and tried to absorb it. For three or four songs he held the line.
But the barrage didn’t stop, and eventually the set had to be paused while security and band management stepped in to deal with the situation properly.
It was handled calmly and efficiently, and within a couple of minutes the band struck back up as though nothing had happened.
For a performer of Suggs’ experience, it was all taken entirely in his stride. If anything, watching him navigate it with that kind of composure only added to the respect in the room.
It Must Be Love produced the kind of mass singalong that Forest Live, with its relaxed, open crowd, is absolutely built for.
Watching thousands of people singing together across a woodland clearing is one of those moments that doesn’t translate well into words.
The photographs say it better.
The encore was exactly what it should have been. First Madness the song, then Night Boat to Cairo to close.
By the time the stage went dark, the forest floor was scattered with pork pie hats and deflated novelty saxophones, and nobody seemed in any particular hurry to leave.
Madness Headline the closing concert for Forest Live 2022 at Thetford High Lodge
About the Photography: Blanc Creative
I’m Lee Blanchflower, founder of Blanc Creative, a Norfolk-based creative production company specialising in music photography and festival video production.
Thetford Forest Live 2022 forms part of a portfolio that covers live music events, festivals, and creative content production across the UK.
Working in live music photography demands quick decisions, real understanding of light and movement, and the ability to read a crowd and anticipate the moment before it happens.
Forest Live in particular offers something special from a visual perspective.
The natural light at dusk through the trees, the warmth of stage lighting against an outdoor backdrop, and the genuine emotion of a diverse crowd all combine to produce images that feel real rather than staged.
Our work at Blanc Creative spans music photography, festival coverage, commercial video production, social media content, and full creative campaigns for clients across Norfolk and beyond.
If you’re looking for a music photographer or festival video production team with a proven portfolio of live event work, we’d love to talk.
Madness in concert remains one of the most joyful live experiences in British music.
Thetford Forest gave them the perfect stage. It was a privilege to be there with a camera.
Photography and content by Lee Blanchflower, Blanc Creative. Norfolk-based music photography and festival video production.
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