McGettigan's Big Day Out with Toploader in Dubai

McGettigan's Big Day Out is an outdoor, full-day music event in Dubai, built around live bands, crowd-pleasing anthems and the kind of singalongs usually associated with a summer festival. The headliners are Toploader, a UK act well known on the festival circuit and best remembered for their hit Dancing in the Moonlight.

The bill goes beyond the headline set. Faux-Asis, an Oasis tribute band, bring a dose of Britpop to the day, and a line-up of local favourites shares the outdoor Pyramid Stage. The programme runs from daytime into the night, with a live BBQ on site and plenty of room to dance, first in the sunshine and later under the moon.

The event takes place at Bla Bla by McGettigan's, part of the McGettigan's family of Irish-style pubs and party venues that has long been a fixture of Dubai's social scene. The venue sits in the Jumeirah Lakes Towers area, close to Dubai Marina, a district of high-rises, lakeside promenades, cafes and bars that is easy to reach from much of the city. Having a stage set up outdoors gives the day a festival feel, which is not always easy to find in a city of hotel ballrooms and indoor clubs.

This is a standing, social format rather than a seated show, so it suits groups of friends, colleagues and anyone who likes to sing along to familiar tunes with a drink in hand. Expect to spend a long stretch of the day at the venue, moving between the stage, the food and the dance floor, as the music carries on from afternoon into the evening.

For fans of British guitar music the line-up is the main draw. Toploader rose to prominence around the turn of the millennium, and Dancing in the Moonlight remains the song most people will be waiting to hear. With an Oasis tribute act earlier in the bill, the mood leans towards classic Britpop and big, shouted-out choruses.