Glastonbuy 2011: Press round-up

The miserable weather made it hard for press photographers to find much to celebrate on site yesterday, so Gordon Smart in The Sun is reduced to running a blurry photo of Professor Green with a cardboard cup of beer:

The rapper - who is headlining the East Dance Tent tonight - intends to make the most of every minute at the festival.

He does, eh?

"But if it rains, I'm just going to stay in the Winnebago, drink rum, play cards and watch it all on TV."

Ah, yes. The classic festival experience of sitting in a caravan playing canasta.

Still, the Winnebago will at least help with time on site, right?

He said: "I've got on it on Thursday, then off Friday, then on it Saturday and on it again on Sunday."

Oh. So he's making the most of every moment, except Friday. Also, that suggests that although Gordon posted this today, and claimed he'd had the conversation with Green yesterday, he couldn't possibly have done. Is the photo really worth smudging the chronology?

The Mail has a tiresome report from "a middle-aged, middle-class mother". Yes, it runs through every bloody Glasto cliche you can think of:

The final tipping point? My wellington boot has literally been sucked off my foot by sticky mud, leaving me in my socks and up to my ankles in gelatinous brown goo.

Julie Lawrence is the Mail's woman crying "in the Portaloos" (did the Mail's legal team not get the regular missive from Portakabin insisting that their trademark not be used as a generic?).

It turns out she's not even a Glastonbury virgin:

Back then, still in my 20s, during the infamous mud bath of 1997, I laughed and trudged along with the best of them. Forget the mud and yucky toilets — sprirituality and music was what it was really all about, wasn’t it?

But now - why, she thinks she must have been as mad as Melanie Philips to enjoy it at all:

I want to shout: ‘Come on, ladies, what are we doing here in our dotage? This is NOT FUN!’ My back is protesting and every ounce of my being is screaming for a sit-down, a nice cup of tea and slice of fruit cake. What do these other middle-class mums have that I do not? Have I grown old before my time?

What do the other people there have that you don't? How about 'a genuine reason for being there other than filing an article that could have been knocked together in a Costa Coffee on Temple Meads station', Julie.

In the Mail tomorrow: Someone who doesn't really like tennis goes to Wimbledon and whines about how it's full of tennis.

The Express, meanwhile, builds its coverage around the cultural highlight of the day:

WAYNE Rooney and his wife Coleen waded into the mud of Glastonbury yesterday in wellies.

Hats off to the inept Express web operation, by the way, which still isn't convinced the U2 gig will happen:

Last night U2 were due to play a long-awaited headline gig at the event, attended by 170,000 revellers.

But, obviously, we won't find out if that happened until the Sunday Express goes to print.

In another part of the Richard Desmond empire - the only-slightly-porny part - the Daily Star is also fixated on Wayne and Colleen, but puts its sister title to shame by doing some Actual Journalism about their arrival:

A guard said: “Wayne seemed in good spirits even though he and Coleen had already got soaked.”

See? It's not a real story unless you talk to an eyewitness.

The Mirror seems to be struggling to make sense of it all:

IT seems Chipmunk’s dietary requirements at Glastonbury were no problem at all. After bringing the house down opening The Other Stage, he tweeted: “GLASTO was HAAAAM!!!!”

And cheese, I hope.

Sarah Tetteh got a byline for that.

The Telegraph had a secret weapon for the U2 set. Their man, Neil McCormick, knows Bono. Yes, he seldom mentions it, so it might be a bit of a surprise to discover that. But this once, he was prepared to use his connections:

Backstage insight from Neil McCormick:

Twitter: Nice to watch Bono signalling & encouraging band from behind the stage. They've got a sneaky keyboard player round back too.

Twitter: Road crew, gtr techs all on their toes for this one, problem solving, shouting at one another. Looks seamless out front. #U2 #glasto

It's not entirely clear how Neil could have been delivering "backstage insight" while also able to explain how it looked from the front.

I'll return to the Telegraph's coverage in a separate post, by the way.

The Guardian wryly reports a flop in the fields:

Mobile phone company, and Glastonbury music partner, Orange, had a cunning ruse to get punters interested in its wares. It sent a 6ft 8in "appy man" to Glastonbury to roam around the site. Festival-goers were challenged to find this man, with the prize potentially being tickets to the side of the Pyramid stage. Clues as to appy man's location were to be posted "on the official Glasto App and via Twitter", Orange wrote.

Alas, the punters the Guardian spoke to were unaware of appy man's existence, let alone whereabouts. This reporter did find appy man, mostly because his PR man was loudly alerting passersby to his presence.

A quick look at the @appy_man twitter feed revealed 500 people had signed up for clues as to his location – or 0.25% of expected Glastonbury attendees.

The idea that people have better things to do at Glastonbury is heartwarming.

Although the presence of a mobile phone company as "music partner" really does look odd given all those claims about Glastonbury isn't sponsored...