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Eavis happy to pay Springsteen induced fine, and other Glasto tales
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 29 June 2009
Glastonbury boss Michael Eavis has said that he’s happy to pay the £3000 fine that will be enforced because of a broken curfew, because the final minutes of Bruce Springsteen’s over-running set at the weekend’s festival were worth it.
The US star went over the 12.30am limit by nine minutes, in a performance that lasted two hours and forty minutes. Eavis said: “I gave him 10 minutes and he took nine. I’ll pay the fine – £3000. Paul McCartney [2004 headliner] paid me back, [but] I’m going to pay the Bruce Springsteen one myself. It’s not a lot because it was fantastic. The last nine minutes were spectacular”.
Presumably keen to ensure no one thought Eavis’ comments meant they all make light of curfew times, a festival spokesman added later: “There are limits because a lot of people live nearby and it is right that things draw to a close at a reasonable hour. [But] each year we get only a handful of complaints about noise”
Elsewhere in Glastonbury news, a man was arrested at this year’s event for being naked in public for the first time in the history of the traditionally liberal festival. At least 131 arrests were made over the course of the weekend, mostly drugs related, which easily tops last year’s figure of 89.
Next up, swine flu; six possible cases were apparently discovered during the course of this year’s Worthy Farm extravaganza. Amongst them were a student from Edinburgh University, a student from Exeter and a ten year old from a family of four. Dr Chris Howes, the festival’s medical services director, said: “We worked very closely with the Health Protection Agency and NHS Somerset in monitoring the situation. The cases of swine flu are suspected but not confirmed because formal testing takes longer, but we gave these patients anti-viral drugs. Everyone had mild symptoms and none required hospital admission. Everyone else was advised to continue with normal hygiene precautions, such as frequent hand washing”.
And finally in Glasto news; a woman attempted to give birth at the festival this weekend, but failed. The mother to be took her midwife with her to the festival in hopes of making her very bizarre dream of a Glasto birth a reality. The unnamed lady wouldn’t have been the first person to give birth at the event – the last one happened in 1998. But it was not to be this time. Despite the fact that she, er, “went to the garden where the healing angel is to sit in a dome which is a sacred place connected to the earth to get good energies”, eventually she had to be taken off to a nearby village to finish the process.
