Sundae on the Common this weekend

3:14pm Wednesday 23rd July 2008

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Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield will be one of the thousands of festival-goers taking advantage of the free ice cream at his company’s ‘Sundae on the Common’ festival which hits Clapham Common this weekend.

This year’s headliners, Ash and The Charlatans, ensured the music event again sold out within a couple of days.

The event is carbon neutral and proceeds will support the first wind energy project in Madagascar.

"I came to Clapham two years ago, it was great,” he says. “We started the festival idea in the US as a small thank you to our customers. We had frog jumping contests and an ice cream eating competition.

“It was an extraordinary coming together, music, ice cream and social and environmental issues. We thought it was the greatest thing. It was very powerful.”

Ben & Jerry’s turns 30 this year and while Jerry says he likes a lot of flavours – there are 20 in all - his least favourite is Cherry Garcia.

“It is the most popular flavour in the US, but it’s not that I don’t like it, but there are other flavours I would go for first,” he says.

B&J have just produced a new ice cream for Elton John. “It was very spontaneous,” says Jerry, “But it is a big thing for us. Vermont, our home town, is a small state in the US. It is the only state he hasn’t played.

“But he has strong ideas on what he likes in his ice cream, so he picked chocolate, peanut butter and cookie dough and called it Goodbye Yellow Brickle Road. He said he always wanted his own ice cream.”