OPINION - Glastonbury? No thanks — with its mix of rain, camping and Coldplay I'd rather be at Taylor Swift instead

Glastonbury Festival 2023

Glastonbury starts again this week and the excitement is palpable. Though I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less.

I can pinpoint the moment my Glasto dream died. It was 2011, in the early hours of Sunday morning and I was lying face down in mud.

The rain that year wasn’t just torrential, it was horizontal – tents flooded and were swept away and Worthy Farm transformed into 900 acres of pure quagmire. Trucks were called in to help clear the worst affected areas and straw was laid down; fat lot of good either did.

Earlier that Saturday after watching a procession of dampened acts, someone nicked my wellies from outside the tent, leaving me with an inferior, ill-fitting pair.

So when I made a fateful step in front the late-night Shangri-la site – tired, cold and already questioning my life choices after an underwhelming Coldplay headline set – I sunk half way up to my calf. The bog refused to give up my boot but did nothing to halt my momentum, sending me hurtling forwards – face first into the mire.

As I looked up to the heavens, dirt clinging to my cheeks, up my nose and in my mouth, two revellers walking past and stopped, then laughed in my face. That put the tin hat on it. This was not the place for me. Get me gone.

Glastonbury is problematic as it combines three of my least favourite things: camping, rain and Coldplay, and that trip to the festival – my last to Worthy Farm – brought all three together in spades. There may be a full house again this year for revellers, who knows.

I should say my festival displeasure is not confined to Glastonbury, but of course, that is the daddy of them all. More than 50 years old and the size of a small city, I still remember the endless walking, the endless fields full of endless people off the heads or out of their minds, all proclaiming – for some reason – that it really wasn’t about the music. Then there were the gong baths and the scary hippies in the stone circle.

Anywhere I have to pay hundreds of pounds for the privilege of sleeping under tarpaulin, being eaten alive by mozzies, alternating being drenched (I went to Bestival on a stag do and also managed to end up coated head to foot in mud), with sneezing myself to death when the sun comes out; the semi-permanent hangover mixed with the ludicrously expensive food that tastes like variations of cardboard, is not my idea of a good time.

Then there’s the loos, the so-called ‘long drops’. The sound of the clanging door is like a terrible tuning fork to the soul, and the infernal smell... Like Marcel Proust’s worst nightmare, any Portaloo since has brought me shuddering back to those fetid cesspits.

I’m glad other people enjoy it, knock yourselves out. But it is beginning to invade our homes too, with the BBC seemingly deciding that it deserves wall to wall coverage.

That might be fine on a year packed with brilliant acts – and who could forget Sir Elton’s farewell gig last year – but in 2024, er, it’s deadly dull. None of the headliners make the heart leap, or even reach for the remote to change over during Antiques Roadshow.

And yet the hype, the build up and the noise remains the same. And so too does Coldplay. They were making their third trip to the festival in 2011, and this year they are back for their record breaking fifth time headlining the Pyramid stage. I will be in the comfort of my own home, and I will not be watching BBC Two.

This weekend I went to the hottest ticket of the year: yes, along with Prince William, Paul McCartney, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and about 270,000 others I was there for the first coming of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour (she returns for five more shows in August).

Tay Tay has always been a cultural juggernaut so huge that I felt I had missed the boat – beyond a few of the very biggest hits – and 11 albums in, where on earth do you start? But a culture editor can’t miss the biggest moment of London pop culture in 2024.

So I did some serious groundwork (put the Eras Tour playlist on loop for a week) and took my first tentative steps into the fandom at Wembley (thank you Viagogo!). And it was… great. Despite myself, surrounded by joy and people making heart shapes with their hands, it was impossible for the soul not to soar with the hooky pop tunes, and sway with the country folk.

So often I’ve left that stadium embittered by the national football team’s chronic performances, trying to avoid the boorish excesses of the fans. The feeling coming out of the show on the weekend could not be further from what is currently playing out in Germany, including last night’s bore draw.

So as a 44-year-old dad of two young kids, have I become a Swiftie by mistake? Oh Taylor, look what you made me do.

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