Katy Perry brings fireworks to ‘Winston Churchill’s backyard’ with gig

“It’s been a long time since I played in someone’s backyard, especially Winston Churchill’s,” joked the pop superstar to thousands of Oxfordshire fans.

The 41-year-old took to the stage at the edge of the Cotswolds on Wednesday (July 1), headlining the inaugural Blenheim Palace Festival in Woodstock.

She performed in the Great Court of the stately home where Sir Winston Churchill was born, now a World Heritage Site.

Katy Perry was carried onto the stage. (Image: Tim Hughes)

Ms Perry’s appearance was the latest in a run of high-profile shows at the new festival throughout the weekend and into this week.

Crowds had already seen Pete Tong Ibiza Classics, Alanis Morissette and Teddy Swims perform, with Michael Bublé due to close the series on Saturday (July 4).

Before Ms Perry arrived on stage, British singer-songwriter Mimi Webb warmed up the Blenheim crowd with a set of break-up anthems and pop ballads.

The 25-year-old leaned into fan favourites such as Good Without and House on Fire, delivering big choruses that chimed with a largely young audience.

Katy Perry and her backing dancers. (Image: Tim Hughes)

Having performed for around 45 minutes, Ms Webb drew cheers as she thanked fans for turning out early to see her ahead of the main event.

By the time Ms Perry appeared, the Great Court was packed, with rows of seated fans and VIP banquet guests rising to their feet as she launched into California Gurls and Teenage Dream, immediately turning the 18th-century courtyard into a technicolour pop playground.

The setlist leaned heavily on her formidable back catalogue, taking in Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.), Chained To The Rhythm, Never Really Over, Dark Horse and E.T., alongside deeper cuts and newer material.

On stage at Blenheim, Ms Perry delivered two hours of precision-engineered pop, with the American switching between slick choreography, tongue-in-cheek banter and soaring vocals that had the crowd playing along.

The American played hits including Firework, Roar and Dark Horse. (Image: Tim Hughes)

The 41-year-old made reference to England’s 2-1 World Cup win over the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which had occurred earlier on in the evening.

Ms Perry even had time to poke fun at her own headline-grabbing exploits, referencing her brief trip beyond the atmosphere with a wry smile.

“You might know me as that girl who went to space for five seconds,” she told the crowd, referencing her minutes in space.

She also paused to talk about the setting, riffing again on the idea of playing in Churchill’s “backyard”, giving a nod to the iconic venue’s history.

Katy Perry pulled out all the hits in Oxfordshire. (Image: Tim Hughes)

Visually, the production combined festival-friendly scale with a sense of spectacle: LED screens and onstage props framed Ms Perry and her band without overwhelming the 300-year-old architecture of the Great Court.

One of the night’s most surreal moments came when she quite literally took to the crowd, clambering into a giant translucent inflatable water bottle and surfing her way over the front blocks of seating.

The segment was cleverly tied to the music – she flipped from Hot N Cold straight into I Kissed A Girl, and it was to that breakthrough hit that she rode the oversized bottle over the audience.

Gliding above the crowd in the translucent capsule, she grinned and waved as the inflatable was carefully passed around the audience.

Crowd response was strongest for the early-2010s run of hits, with Teenage Dream and Roar prompting mass singalongs.

There were quieter moments too, with Katy Perry stripping things back for an intimate and acoustic rendition of Thinking of You.

The night ended, inevitably, with her mega-hit Firework, delivered against a backdrop of lighting that spilt over the palace façades.

It was a pleasure to have pop royalty here in Oxfordshire, and it’s safe to say that Ms Perry’s roar could be heard across the Cotswolds on Wednesday night.

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