Glastonbury round up: The journey home

It's not just the streets of Britain which have become a godless place, apparently - The Sun reports a Glasto crimewave:

CRIME more than doubled at this year’s Glastonbury Festival, police figures revealed yesterday.

By last night there were 489 reports of crime among the 170,000 festival-goers, including drug offences.

The shock number compared to 236 reported crimes at the three-day music extravaganza last year.

Cops said this was because there were more tent thefts, trying to put a happy face on it:

Sergeant Carolyn Crocker said last night: “Despite a challenging festival in terms of thefts from tents, 99.7 per cent of festival-goers will return home having not been victims of crime.

“The event remains one of the safest of its kind and we continue to work proactively with festival security to ensure people have a safe final night.”

"Challenging" = we have had a rotten festival.

Gordon's team chooses to celebrate binge drinking again - remember, it's only a problem in the news pages:

And THE TWANG’s PHIL ETHERIDGE has a top phrase for going on the lash – “Getting on the swamp”. Genius.

Yes. What genius. I'm starting the public subscription for the statue and blue plaque.

Gordon didn't enjoy Jay-Z, either:

The whole point of the big bill topper is to get your arms around your pals’ shoulders and sing along to the chorus.

So when Jay opened the show by miming to OASIS megahit Wonderwall – after playing a tape of NOEL GALLAGHER saying he was wrong for Glasto – I thought we were in for a treat.

It was all downhill after that, though. There was no spine-tingling COLDPLAY Fix You moment. Or 50,000 people singing Don’t Look Back In Anger and pointing at the sky.

A festival entertainment where you don't feel you're stuck in a Burnage Bierkeller sounds like a step-up to us - surely, if Smart wants to get involved in some man-on-man hugging - just as mates, like, not in a funny way - he could have waited for the Verve.

Talking of whom, the mystery of what the hell they were doing as headliners was explained by Richard Ashcroft, reports the BBC:

"I want to thank Emily Eavis for inviting us to play Glastonbury," Ashcroft told the crowd. "And I hope her dad realises why she booked us now."

Mr Eavis founded the festival on his Somerset dairy farm 38 years ago.

It's not known yet who came up with Kings Of Leon, though. Perhaps they let the cows have a go at choosing a headliner, too.

Alexis Petridis in the Guardian was more positive about Jay-Z than Gordon was:

Then a broad grin spreads across his face and the crowd go obligingly berserk. It's the sound of a risk paying off handsomely.

It's also one of those transcendent, tingle-inducing Glastonbury moments people talk about so much, but it's a Glastonbury moment unlike any other: suddenly, a festival whose very future seemed pretty bleak 24 hours ago feels like a triumph.

But then, if Guardian writers want to hug their mates, they hug them. They don't have to wait until Noel Gallagher gives them the excuse.

The 3AM Girls suggest there was some band-on-band rudeness:

Amy Winehouse snubbed by Arctic Monkeys at Glastonbury

Although it turns out this "snub" was, erm, just that didn't go to watch her.

Michael Eavis - as pretty much is standard by now - has decided that his crazy plan worked, telling the Mail:

Summing up the weekend of music, festival founder Michael Eavis said: "We've a much younger audience this year.

"It's like Sunday school at a nice local church. You have to have youngsters there, otherwise we just all grow old together."

60 Seconds on BBC Three last night had a quote from "organisers" suggesting that the appearance of Jay-Z had "secured the festival for the next two years", which seems a little unlikely - or, rather, like so much spin to us. We're guessing the scraping last-minute sell-out was the deciding factor.

In the Times, Caitlin Moran was won over, suggesting that in the context of some of the other things you might see in the fields, a major recording artist playing his hits is hardly that unusual:

But a wonderful air of curiosity is embedded in Glastonbury's bones — and what you found outré on Thursday, by Sunday is greeted merely with a shrug and an amused “Why not?”.

After all, when you've spent all weekend sitting under a 30ft robot ant, watching a man dressed as a toilet holding hands with Queen Victoria, you might as well go down to the Pyramid Stage, and attend your first hip-hop gig.

So, Jay-Z proved that a good performance can convince many doubters. Over in the Telegraph, Tom Horan discovered the same message, but in a slightly less likely corner:

The old Harrovian-turned-crooner James Blunt divides people into two distinct camps - both of which contain millions of members. There are those who can't bear the sight of him, and those who buy every note he records.

As he took to Glastonbury's Pyramid stage in blazing sunshine both were well represented, and neither was disappointed.

I lost count of the thousands of women mouthing every line of the former Guardsman's romantic ballads. To their credit, they comfortably drowned out the people hooting and laughing at each new declaration of love or all-round sensitivity.

Yes, James Blunt - for the Telegraph, bravely walking into enemy fire:

Blunt, as always, simply rose above it all, and delivered a slick, professional performance. His commanding officer would have been proud of him.

Horan also takes some sort of prize for stripping a set down to its essentials, in his entire Amy Winehouse review:

The troubled singer, pictured, took to the stage wearing a blue dress and greeted the audience by saying "hello, Glastonbury" to much applause.

We suspect the word "pictured" explains this rather odd sentence which misses much of the drama of Winehouse's appearance - it's just a sop to allow the paper to run a photo of a young woman in a strapless dress. Everyone, eventually, gets the Glastonbury they want.

[Part of Glastonbury 2008]