It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in the North of England. I'm stood in the Radio One/NME Stage security pit at Leeds Festival in Bramham Park and Aiden have just appeared on stage.

After a couple of songs Aiden's front man, William Francis, offers the crowd a shiny, crisp ten pound note if any of them can make it past security and on to the main stage. Just twenty-four hours earlier the same request was made at Reading Festival and hundreds of crowd surfers were looked after by security to make sure they were having a good weekend. Why is it at Leeds Festival something has gone horribly wrong?

Within seconds it is apparent that security are to have a zero-tolerance attitude towards anybody trying to achieve what the band have requested and they launch two, three, four or more at a time on top of members of the crowd. It's pretty bad. Actually, in the many years and hundreds of sets I've seen I've not witnessed security acting like this before.

At the end of the song, and with nobody making it on stage, a security supervisor seems proud of their achievements whilst restraining Aiden's fans and he makes a very stern gesture at the band indicating that requesting your fans come and dance with you is absolutely unacceptable.

Towards the end of Aiden's set, the band once again asking their fans to join them on stage. First for the same tenner, followed by the offer of a backstage pass. This causes quite a few souls to pour over the barrier in an attempt to join their favourite band on stage.

One security member physically drags a member of the crowd out by their hair, despite him and another member of staff having the fan in an arm lock. Another fan has riot police handcuffs placed on his wrist in a scene that is reminiscent of some of the worst police forces on the planet. Four or five security members jump on one fan that ends up drifting in and out of consciousness and needing medical assistance after security ruined the kid's weekend. Instead of focussing their attentions solely on this individual, several of the security staff go back to injuring the rest of the crowd.

The farce continues with security members conducting a flying rugby tackle and twisting people's arms as burly, fat, sweaty security officers sit on crowd member's faces and pin them down with their elbows. One fan even has his head knocked against the crate supporting the TV camera filming the set. These are not the scenes you usually see at a rock and roll gig where fans just want to give their idol a big hug and have a dance with them.

Two members of the crowd manage to survive this barrage of near-human rights abuse and actually make it on stage – whilst others actually get dragged off stage, even after making it past security.

As the set ends, my mind starts to wander back to Reading Festival a few years ago with Andrew WK's main stage performance. During his last song he invited as many fans as could make it on to the stage and by the end of the set well over fifty had managed to make it on to the stage, only to be greeted with hugs. They didn't kill him, they didn't tear apart the stage and they then left the stage cordially and went on to have a bloody good weekend but having managed to get on to a festival stage with their idol.

Why is it, just four years ago and even a day earlier hundreds of fans went home with a memorable experience that they'll never forget where as the Aiden fans at this year's Carling Weekend: Leeds Festival are going home with bruises and damaged body parts as a sad reminder of the set?

To have a look at some pictures taken in the security pit during Aiden's performance click here.

Room Thirteen's Leeds Festival 2007 coverage will be online over the next 48 hours with reviews of many of the weekend's bands and a selection of high-resolution photographs too.

Do you agree or disagree with our thoughts on security? Have they changed over the years or is this a one off incident? Were you at the Leeds Aiden set and have some comments on it? Did you get man-handled by security? Drop an e-mail to Guy@RoomThirteen.com with your thoughts and we'll update this feature with your feedback.