The latest big names to join the bill for the Zoo Thousand and Eight (Zoo8) festival at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park are Ash and The Hives.

Irish popsters Ash had a string of hits in the 1990s including Girl From Mars and Oh Yeah, while besuited Swedes The Hives stormed the charts in 2000 with Hate to Say I Told You So.

The Hives will close the festival on Sunday, July 6, with Ash playing on Saturday, July 5.

Speaking to the Kentish Express, organiser Matt Dice said he was delighted with the way preparations for the festival were going.

“Tickets are going really well,” he said. “We are delighted with the acts that we’ve got.”

Matt, who lives in Canterbury, also described how he and his co-organisers Daniel Blanche and Ricardo Monty had come up with the idea for the festival.

He said: “We are all music promoters, we’ve done events all over Kent in the past, and we were speaking about doing something on a bigger scale.

“About 18 months ago we went down to the zoo and just thought what a brilliant place it was to do a festival.”

He added: “We’ve created a monster because the festival is bigger than we originally set out to do.

“We’ve had some serious tear-our-hair-out moments waiting for acts to confirm, but as it’s gone on we upped our game a little, and it’s brilliant because these are world class acts that we are bringing to Port Lympne.”

Other headliners include Mark Ronson, Dizzee Rascal and Athlete.

More bands joining the bill this week are The Holloways and The Delays, while Ash fans are in for a double treat, as the band’s former guitarist Charlotte Hatherly performs a solo set on Sunday.

Tickets are still available for the festival, which runs from Friday, July 4 to Sunday, July 8.

A standard weekend ticket with camping costs £99, with various group offers and concessions available.

They can be bought on line at www.zoothousand.com or at shops in the district including HMV.