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Glastonbury staying where it bloody well is for the next seventeen years
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 3 April 2017
Emily Eavis has announced that Glastonbury Festival’s future at its current site is assured for at least the next seventeen years, after a deal was signed with a neighbouring farmer whose land the event uses. So you can probably expect Michael Eavis to announce that the festival is moving to a badger sanctuary in about 20 minutes.
As previously reported, over the last year or so Michael Eavis has said a number of times that the Glastonbury Festival could be forced to move to a new site at some point, due to issues with the land it occupies being working farmland. These comments are generally followed by an interview with Emily Eavis saying that Glastonbury will never move from Worthy Farm, but the team behind the festival are planning to set up a new event, called the Variety Bazaar, elsewhere in the country.
Speaking to 6 Music on Friday, Emily said: “Glastonbury will always be here at Worthy Farm. We have just signed a seventeen year contract with one of our neighbouring farmers, so it’s very much as solid as it can be here”.
“We are going to do another festival at some point called the Variety Bazaar which is going to be something different”, she added. “It’s the same team, but a different idea, a smaller thing, maybe. It’s still in discussion. But Glastonbury Festival will always be here and hopefully we can keep it going. We’ve managed to keep it going for this long so hopefully we can keep it going a bit longer”.
Ah, it was all going so well, then that last sentence made it sound like Glastonbury’s on it’s last legs. They should just shut it down and let us off this rollercoaster. Yeah? Who’s with me? Not BBC Music I reckon, because it has just signed a deal to film at the farm until 2022. Having a weekend’s worth of footage of cows each June might look a bit odd. Though it would make a nice change.
“This partnership confirms our ongoing commitment to placing music centre stage on the BBC, and presenting our programmes to a global audience via radio, online, television and BBC Red Button”, said BBC radio and music boss Bob Shennan. “As Glastonbury is one of the world’s leading musical celebrations, I’m delighted that the BBC will be its broadcast home until 2022, the BBC’s 100th anniversary year, bringing the magical joy of Worthy Farm to everyone, whether at home or on the move”.
He means whether the viewer is on the move, not the festival. Let’s not start all that again.
