“If I was away and couldn’t follow things up my wife could do it after she had put the children to bed.”Speed and availability of the service will be the key to its success, and could prove to be especially useful for people buying a newly built home where 28-day exchanges are the norm, or for those selling their home while they are out of the country. tel: 0845 234 0210; tel: 07004 327437Fiona Brandhorst. Robert Plant will headline the Isle of Wight festival this summer, which is returning after a 32-year absence from the rock calendar. He will be appearing alongside the Charlatans, Ash and Starsailor at the £35-a-head gig, which the Isle of Wight hopes will resurrect its musical traditions.Hundred Reasons and The Coral, will also perform to a crowd of 25,000 alongside local bands The Bees, Johnny 4 and DNA Doll on 3 June in Newport.During the 1960s, the Isle of Wight became a fixture on the festival circuit. But in 1970, the event was marred by ill-feeling when Hells Angels responded angrily after being dropped from their traditional role as festival security guards and European anarchists disrupted the concert..

Sami Saari was not a happy pop star yesterday. As one of EMI’s stable of 49 Finnish music idols, he was less than delighted to find his boss suggesting that neither he nor his 5 million compatriots could carry a tune. Finland’s Top 10
1, E-type ­ Life2, Shakira ­ Whenever Wherever3, Sarah Connor ­ From Sarah With Love4, A1 ­ Caught In The Middle5, Kwan ­ Late6, Anastacia ­ Paid My Dues7, Antique ­ Follow Me8, Pink ­ Get The Party Started9, Laura N?i ­ Kuutamolla10, Britney Spears ­ Overprotected Sami Saari was not a happy pop star yesterday. I am proud to be Finnish and a singer.”And Ilkka Alanko, a singer with the guitar group Nelja Ruusua, said: “The man who says that doesn’t give a monkey’s fiddle about Finnish music Rock’n'roll isn’t only about singing, it’s about expression. I would like Mr Levy to come here and apologise.”EMI said last night that Mr Levy had no immediate plans for a trip to Scandinavia.The source of the ill-feeling came from the impresario’s attempts to illustrate his feeling that the company had invested in too many mediocre acts in countries as far apart as Argentina to Korea.He told reporters on Wednesday: “We discovered we had 49 artists in Finland. I don’t think there are 49 Finns who can sing.”EMI attempted to pour oil on troubled waters by issuing a statement saying that Mr Levy, who made PolyGram the world’s biggest and most profitable record label, respected musicians from all nations.But the conglomerate pointedly refused to name which countries the 400 acts it has discarded in search of savings of £240m came from. EMI said it was still committed to developing its “local repertoire”.But there was an ominous silence from EMI Finland’s Helsinki headquarters over which of its 49 acts, including such names as Wigwam, Lollipop, Linda Brava and Smurffit, had been chopped.An insider said: “We’ve been told we can’t say who we might have let go London are a bit sensitive about it all.

The singing Finns comment was a joke that backfired.”EMI, currently languishing bottom of the league of the world’s five biggest record companies, enjoys a high degree of success in Finland. With a 22 per cent share of the market, it is the country’s biggest. It has six multi-platinum acts in Finland, including Eppu Normaali, the only band to sell more than a million copies in the country.To add to the sense of destiny that Mr Levy should feel about his company’s success in Finland, his name in Finnish means “record”.But for a nation that ploughs millions of euros a year into developing music from street rap to high opera, the remarks last night remained unforgivable.This, according to cultural commentators, is because Finns consider themselves among the world’s most refined musical aficionados, producing a constant flow of popular and classical maestros.Anssi Hirvonen, the head of the singing department at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, said: “I’m afraid the remark of Mr Levy is total rubbish. Frankly, the list of acclaimed Finnish singers is too long to recite.”The Finnish Embassy in London pointed out that, unlike in Britain, music is a compulsory subject in schools until the age of 16 and that music accounts for the largest chunk of the government’s cultural budget.Finland’s record market is worth around £130m a year – £26 per head of population – and the country also has a long record in exporting opera singers, such as the soprano Carita Mattila.The main genre of popular music in Finland is known as the schlager – a melancholic rock ballad sung in Finnish. This, according to the country’s pop critics, is why record companies have to have so many home-grown acts in Finland.Ilkka Mattila, a music writer at Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s biggest newspaper, said: “It is not unusual to find eight Finnish albums in our top 10.”Finns like to hear music sung in their own language and because of that our pop music is doing better than it has done in the last 20 years The variety gets wider every year And we can sing.”. There is a city, not so far away, where melody is treasured, where music is unashamedly joyous, where the fey meanderings of po-faced introspectives are banished, and where drummers are unafraid to keep time, recognising that if it was good enough for Art Blakey it’s good enough for them too.