GLASTONBLINGY

This year, even the BBC Business News team is suggesting Glastonbury's become a bit of a, well, corporate sell out.

The festivals, um, director of sponsorship denies this, which is a bit like the FA's head of orgy planning denying the place is full of sex:

"We don't have anything like the involvement with sponsors that other festivals have," says Glastonbury's director of sponsorship Robert Richards.

"We've not increased sponsorship levels for the past four years.

"We don't go for overt sponsorship," he adds, adding that arms groups and tobacco companies are all banned, and the sponsors are expected to offer added-value for festival goers.

We're not quite sure how having an "official beer of the Glastonbury festival" - Budweiser, actually - offers "added-value", but we're sure it does, somehow. We do recall, however, that in the past, beer at Glastonbury was provided by the Workers' Beer Company, a socially-organised affair. But, hey, socialism is dead, and Europe is open for business:

"I seriously believe having dealings with commercial companies does benefit Glastonbury," Mr Richards says.

"It's useful. It helps maintain things and allows us to do what we do.

"If we had no contact [with companies] we'd be in a little bubble of good intentions of the caring kind, fixed in aspic."

Yes, without the pouring in of large sums of corporate marketing budget from multinational companies, you might not be able to get a sample of how life could be simpler if we all lived off the land and rejected multinationals (apart from the ones underwriting... oh).

Nobody really expects Glastonbury to be able to resist the lure of market cash - apart from anything, Clear Channel is keen to get its slice of the action- but perhaps it's time for it to drop the pretence to be in any way alternative. It's no longer a radical celebration of arts, bloody mindedness and everything alternative. It's a place for the children of Daily Telegraph readers to find out about a range of Orange Mobile Phone Packages before they disappear on their gap year.

music glastonbury festivals