Glastonbury Diary: Swine flu, Jarvis triumphant and kipping at the cinema

Rob Sharp
Sunday 28 June 2009 19:00 EDT
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Moderate panic spread through the fug of hangovers yesterday when it emerged that three revellers had been diagnosed with suspected swine flu. A 10-year-old and two university students had shown symptoms and were moved off the festival site and into an isolation facility before returning home. "The view of the chief medical officer is that they had this before turning up," said Cristo Hird, a festival spokesman. "There is no more risk here than anywhere. Three in 177,000 people is very low."

* Jarvis Cocker had to deal with more than just the death of a one-time nemesis over the weekend. While on the John Peel stage on Saturday, he was confronted with a stage invader, who grabbed the microphone off him and said: "Without this man, Britpop would have been shit. He gave it integrity, which no one else did." Cocker was suitably embarrassed, taking the man's bottle of champagne from him, swigging from it, and then continuing his performance. A true professional.

* Even people who are not under the influence are unlikely to get more than four hour's sleep a night at Glastonbury. So come day three, it is a good idea to indulge in a strategic power nap – and the best place for it is the cinema tent. Anyone will tell you it's the place not to be when the sun is shining, so thankfully it is often empty, cool, comfy as well as dark. Festival staff will even bring you a blanket if you snooze through the credits.

* Viewers of the Kasabian set broadcast on the BBC on Saturday might not realise why front man Tom Meighan kept on smiling during the band's performance of "Fire". Well, in true Woodstock spirit, a statuesque blonde was perched on the shoulders of a fellow reveller and at one point, the cameras zoomed in to show she was topless. Her image was broadcast across the festival's screens, to the pleasure of the crowd, who gave her a roar of approval.

* Mobile phone signals are normally below par at music festivals because so many people are trying to text their friends, but that didn't stop a few key individuals from Twittering away during Bruce Springsteen's performance. The staff at Q magazine were first to reveal, with unbelievable zeal, that some of the front row were playing the Boss's guitar during a particularly troublesome middle 8. But perhaps the best tweet was by the journalist Jon Ronson. "Oh Bruce, I'd wrap my hands across your engine any time," he wrote.

* Rumours abound about the festival-goer who went into labour somewhere near the Stone Circle early on Saturday. It is believed the lady was a Glastonbury veteran who wanted to eschew conventional medicine and insist on the help of neuropathic experts from the festival's Healing Fields. In the end, it was considered safer to let the birth happen off-site. "It's a shame we can't say it's a Glastonbury birth," said one onlooker. "But it's nice to know that part of the birth process happened in such a special spot."

* A festival highlight was a set by Pendulum, an English-Australian band who turned the entire Other Stage into a huge rave, running into the crowd to whip them into a fervour. "Glastonbury Festival, you are now about to witness, pure undiluted carnage," said front man Rob Swine. Mostly this meant teenagers coming up to you and asking if you were having a good time before falling over.

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