No Glastonbury in 2012

Tue 19th Oct, 2010 in International News

Kenny would be appalled! There’ll be no Glastonbury festival in 2012 because too many of England’s Portaloos will be in service at the London Olympics.

Speaking to The Mail on Sunday, the festival’s organiser Michael Eavis confirmed the sad news: “We have decided to cancel in 2012 because there will be severe shortages of police and Portaloo buildings – both essential to the festival…We have our own stock of portable toilets but we always need more. We shop around with four companies to get the best price, but we are not bothering for 2012. There will be a huge demand for Portaloo toilets in London, so every¬one will push up their prices and I can see it getting very expensive.”

Glastonbury spokesman John Sherlaw explained to the Guardian that while the festival traditionally has a “fallow years” to allow the land to recover and to give the organisers a rest that 2011 had originally been pencilled in as the break year. However the clash with the Olympics has forced their hand. The most recent fallow years were in 2001 – following the Roskilde tragedy – and 2006.

The decision to flush the 2012 festival was also affected by the additional security required by the Olympics. Glastonbury reportedly spends £1.2million a year on policing the actions of 130,000 visitors (and potential gate crashers), but Eavis claims that “there will not be enough police to cover the festival in 2012 as they will all be in London.”

While the headliners for next year’s festival have not yet been announced – though it’s widely rumoured that U2 and Beyonce will play – the tickets for the festival sold out in four hours when they went on sale earlier this month