West Yorkshire could become Britain's most sought-after venue for open-air rock music in 1999.

Music-goers in the county were starved of major live events until new festivals sponsored by Heineken and then Virgin were launched in the past decade.

The V series of concerts at Temple Newsam Park in Leeds have rapidly grown into the biggest draws on the pop calendar.

And now the famous Reading Festival is bidding to move to Yorkshire as well.

Vince Power, boss of the London-based Mean Fiddler Organisation, which runs the annual extravaganza, wants to turn Reading into a split-site event, using Temple Newsam as the base for three days of music.

If the plans go ahead, it could see an unprecedented number of rock fans from all over the UK converging on West Yorkshire in the summer.

The park would be a focal point for major festivals on two consecutive weekends, with V99 pencilled in for August 21 and 22 and organisers of the new Yorkshire-based version of the Reading Festival hoping to be given permission to be staged the following week, which is August Bank Holiday.

However, Leeds Council, which has to grant licences for both Metropolis, which is promoting V99, and the Mean Fiddler, may decide that the two events are too close together for both to be allowed to go ahead.

Industry insiders are predicting that 1999 could be a boom year for open-air music events. Regular festivals such as Glastonbury and T In The Park in Scotland are likely to be staged again, as well as a massive ten-day event in Cornwall to mark the solar eclipse.

But Leeds will be the only place in the north of England to have its own major festival. No acts have been announced for any of 1999's big events. Last year saw Robbie Williams, The Verve, Catatonia, All Saints and James Brown perform at V98 in Leeds.

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