THE Forestry Commission are celebrating a double sell-out for this weekend's Forest Live concerts by Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott on Saturday and George Ezra on Sunday at Dalby Forest, near Pickering.

The running times for Saturday will be: support act Billy Bragg, the Barking Bard, from 7.20pm to 8.20pm and Heaton & Abbott from 8.50pm to 10.30pm; Sunday, support act Brixton R&B singer Dan Caplen, 7.40pm to 8.20pm, and Ezra, 8.50pm to 10.30pm.

The woodland arena will be open each evening from 6pm, but please note all running times are approximate and are subject to change, even on the day of the event.

Heaton and Abbott will combine hits from Heaton's first Hull group The Housemartins and he and Jacqui's days in The Beautiful South with songs from their three top five albums as a duo: 2014's What Have We Become?, 2015's Wisdom, Laugher And Lines and last year's Crooked Calypso, which charted at number two.

Songwriter Heaton has sold ten million album sales to his name fronting The Housemartins and The Beautiful South, releasing solo albums under his own name and as Biscuit Boy aka Crackerman and now in tandem with Abbott. She had sung with The Beautiful South in their middle years from 1994 to 2000, most notably on Rotterdam and Don't Marry Her, when she was always the best Tammy Wynette to Paul's George Jones, the natural yin to his yang.

Heaton and Abbott previously performed at Dalby Forest in June 2015, ten years after The Beautiful South recorded a concert video there, and now Heaton completes his hattrick of al fresco dates in the forest glade.

George Ezra added Dalby Forest to his Forest Live itinerary after "phenomenal demand for tickets" for his Westonbirt Arboretum and Cannock Chase Forest concerts down south. His North Yorkshire gig promptly sold out too in a year when Staying At Tamara's, his long-awaited follow-up to his chart-topping debut album, Wanted On Voyage, knocked The Greatest Showman off its seemingly endless perch in March.

Ezra had returned from his hiatus last summer with the single Don’t Matter Now and the sold-out, tongue-in-cheek-titled Top Secret Tour and a summer of festival performances at Glastonbury, V Festival, TRNSMT and the Isle of Wight Festival.

Forest Live is held every summer at seven Forestry Commission locations nationwide, with income generated from ticket sales going towards looking after the forests' sustainably, for people to enjoy and wildlife to thrive.

The weather forecast is dry for both nights, 19 degrees C and sunny intervals for Saturday; 23 degrees C and sunny till dusk for the suitably sunnier Ezra.

Charles Hutchinson