ISLE of Wight Festival boss John Giddings has sat down and greeted us with a beaming smile.

His face is almost hurting because he’s worn the same delighted expression for days, while his voice is almost non-existent – the sign of enjoying a very good weekend.

It’s a world away from this time last year, when the man responsible for rocking this tiny island with some of the best bands and artists in the world was instead, he admits, shedding a few tears.

Twelve months ago the music promoter, who has some of the biggest names in the business on his books, had little time to stop and chat because he was busy helping push car after car out of the mud-swamped car parks at Seaclose Park in Newport.

And he was bracing himself for the backlash that he would inadvertently get after an unprecedented amount of rain brought gridlock to the roads and left ferries stranded in the Solent as festival-goers struggled to make it on site ahead of the 2012 festival.

But today, thankfully, it’s a very different story – and very different weather.

Revellers have been stopping him at every turn to shake his hand and thank him for an amazing weekend, while the £250,000 investment in new entrances to the car parks has not even been put to the test because, in the main, the sun has shone throughout.

“It’s been incredible, just look at this weather,” says Mr Giddings as he sits down and draws breath for ten minutes, having just raced back on a buggy to his offices backstage after watching Bob Geldof sing his classic I Don’t Like Mondays.

“I got a bit emotional listening to that, thinking about the shooting in America. It made me well up for the first time this weekend,” he tells me.

There were strong rumours that the Boomtown Rats frontman would be making another appearance on the main stage later that day to sing with Bon Jovi.

It was one Mr Giddings had also heard, but sadly it failed to materialise.

But it didn’t dampen the spirits of more than 50,000 people who enjoyed a weekend packed with music from bands including world-renowned The Killers and The Stone Roses to The Script, Fun, T’Pau, Ellie Goulding, Emile Sande and Little Mix.

Since the curtain fell on this year’s festival, there has been widespread debate about who was the highlight of the weekend, with Mr Giddings saying he’d been repeatedly told that The Killers were the best headliner of all time, although he tells us he’s not quite sure he agrees.

It’s a hard one to measure, as there have been so many world-acclaimed artists to grace the stage, from Bowie to The Who, The Rolling Stones, Springsteen and Coldplay – and that’s the thing about festivals. Everyone has their own opinion on who shone.

So what now for IOW 2014, I ask?

Of course, the planning is long under way, but the man in charge is refusing to let much slip.

We chat about his desire to bring back some of the above mentioned names before moving on to discuss how well the likes of Barbados born Rihanna would go down on the main stage next year – and he agrees that could be a possibility.

Mr Giddings goes on to ask what we think about David Guetta performing on the main stage on one of the days, and questions if it could be a success, before we talk about the rave reviews of thousands of people who packed into the Big Top to watch Fun, and he speaks about how they could easily carry the main arena crowd in the future.

So what about the rumours that rear their head around this time every year that Mr Giddings plans to wash his hands of the festival and hand over the reins – and the stress – to someone else?

“I hate gardening and I don't like playing golf,” he says.

“This is my baby, and for as long as people want to keep coming here, then I’ll keep going.”