The Daily Telegraph on Glastonbury 1994 ‘no longer outside the mainstream’ 2025 ‘middle class Butlins’
The Daily Telegraph on Glastonbury 25th June 1994
The mainstream press were initially not keen on reporting Glastonbury (including the Guardian) but as they realised their readers were going that had to change. Below is an extract from the Telegraph’s report of the festival in 1994
Here are 500 market stalls offering ‘skins, bhongs and chillums, bootleg reggae tapes, Thai, Chinese and Mexican food and the ‘great British bacon sandwich,,, there is ‘’sugar free astrology, a ‘rent an argument’ tent and ‘chanting with Avril and Mike’ for anyone who honestly thinks they can take it.
There is also an abundance of new technology in the shape of wind powered telephones, a computerised message screen enabling Mad Dog to meet Rat Face under the mushroom cloud and a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer enabling members of the Avon and Somerset CID to make on the spot analysis of any suspicious substances seized on the festival site (Mick Brown)
Eavis acknowledges that the festival is no longer quite so much outside the mainstream as it once was although whether Glastonbury has changed or the rest of England is hard to say
What Telegraph readers made of this I’m not sure but I’m also fairly certain that in 2025 numbers of them will be on site and more watching it on the BBC.
One that probably won’t be is Tom Slater far right journalist who edits Spiked. He has written a piece in the Telegraph claiming that Glastonbury is a middle-class Butlins and that it is an embarrassment.
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