EVERY year, as hordes of the filthy and exhuasted traipse away from Worthy Farm, the ghostly words ‘never fucking again’ seem to hang in the very air. 

But did you realise that these very words, muttered by the sleep, water and seating-deprived zombies the Glastonbury Festival produces, are a mere echo of the cry first uttered by founder Michael Eavis in 1970?

Inspired by Woodstock, the Somerset farmer held a music festival on his land and, two days later, threw the first of what would become annual tantrums about how horrendous the whole occasion had been.

Amateur footage shows Eavis, then a young man, stating: “Never again. No way on my bloody life. Piss off every last hippie. I need a sit down and a biscuit.

“Get off my land, you parasitical bastards. I saw you shitting in hedges when Wayne Fontana was on. Christ, the stink of you. I can smell that twat with the white man’s afro from here. Was he rolling in dung? Is that his thing?

“I thought it’d be the best gig ever having all these band in one place, but it’s the worst. Non-stop queueing just to watch them dick around and not play their biggest hits. Plus some seven foot knob was stood in front of me the whole time.

“My back’s buggered, I’m knackered and Christ my head. A one-day festival and I’ve got a five-day fucking hangover. I threw up on a cow. I’ll be scrubbing that clean later.

“Nope. Absolutely never again. You will never convince me that this is not a terrible way to spend my time and an even worse way for these losers to spend their money.”

The footage surprised archivists as, mere months later, minutes from a village meeting recorded Eavis stating ‘ah it was fun though, wasn’t it?’ and ‘let’s do it again next year but with Hawkwind’.

And so the cycle of Glastonbury began and would be repeated for the next 53 years, among the Eavis family, all attendees and every band that has ever played there.

Next week: to 1701, when Jethro Tull first invented prog rock.