THE ‘I’m sorry, what the f**k?’ Wagner mutiny during Glastonbury is just one of the major news events the festival has cursed us with:
A private army taking over Russia, Glastonbury 2023
Torn straight from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Putin’s former caterer who now runs a merc army invaded Russia and came within miles of Moscow before deciding ‘no hard feelings’ and going home. Revellers discovered this at 4am when a slam poet did a set about it at Woodsies.
The death of Michael Jackson, Glastonbury 2009
The self-proclaimed Nonce of Pop passed on the Friday and the festival responded by becoming a hellish tribute mudbath broadcasting Pretty Young Thing from each stall, despite everything. F**king Nick Cave probably did the Thriller dance, you were too twisted to know.
Britain wins Falklands War, 1982
At the Glastonbury CND Festival of 1982, our modern clubbing drugs had not been developed. The anti-war crowd was on bad speed and bad hash watching Van Morrison and in no mood to celebrate the retaking of the South Sandwich Islands. Their hand-painted signs had become instantly irrelevant.
The Brexit referendum, 2016
You wake up, full of the joys of rain leaking into your tent, on Friday morning and discover Farage has won, Britain is fully committed to an undefined thing called Brexit, the prime minister’s f**king resigned and the site is sinking deep into the earth. And the Pyramid stage has Muse, Adele and Coldplay? Seven years of hell starts here.
John Major resigning, 1995
The year of Britpop was also the year of John Major unexpectedly resigning to take on the nutters and settle the EU question once and for all, which it didn’t as proven by the previous entry. There were no phones then. People emerged blinking after three days hammered going ‘what?’
England out of Euros on penalties, 2004
Happened on the Thursday evening, but what a way to start a Glastonbury; dejected, England are crap and somebody’s nicked your coat. A load of shite bands aren’t going to fix that and by the end of the weekend you’ve been dumped. Still, in 1986 Maradona scored the Hand of God goal and the headliner was Gil Scott-Heron.
