Down with the Glasto smugfest

I suppose this will seem churlish, but I’d just like to add my support to the grime rapper Wiley who, upon arriving at the Glastonbury festival, tweeted to Michael Eavis: ‘Fuck you and your farm.’ I’m not sure what motivated this annoyance but credit where it’s due, it’s roughly what I’ve felt about this bloated middle class smugfest for the last fifteen years. If it persuades the badger-strangling but otherwise impeccably PC post-hippy Eavis to call it a day, so much the better. Why in Christ’s name would anyone wish to attend a music festival in which the headline acts are almost double the ages of the cabinet (and slightly further to the right)? Rock music was at its best when it was counter-cultural and the BBC allowed it on air only in the wee small hours and the Telegraph explicitly refused to cover it at all. (Nb: I remember an ad campaign from The Daily Telegraph in the mid 1970s in which it championed its brilliant arts coverage and ended with the words ‘and still no rock music’.)