Why watching Glastonbury on television is better then being there... Well, almost!

Okay so I want to begin this article with the prerequisite that, yes, I am jealous of all the people actually at Glastonbury, in my 25 years of life I haven’t even gotten close to legitimately getting tickets despite being up at the crack of dawn, using multiple phones and around a thousand constantly refreshing internet tabs, those elusive tickets have been slightly beyond my grasp.

I have luckily managed to secure myself one visit to Glastonbury thanks to Oxfam and their need for volunteering and I had a bonafide magical time watching Elbow, Coldplay, Beyonce and others. I would heartedly recommend that anyone who can get a ticket should do it.

That being said, I have had a whale of a time following coverage of this years crowning UK festival, I’ve seen a massively diverse array of music, perhaps moreso than I would’ve seen had I been there, and I’ve done it all from the comfort of my own home.

I’ve watched as traffic chaos, bad weather and thousands of people ignoring the desperate pleas of festival organisers to not arrive at the festival yet brought entire areas of the south west to a standstill. I’ve seen locals complaining that yet again Glastonbury has made life almost unbearable. I’ve seen people struggling through neverending amounts of mud and I haven’t even moved.

I’m watching Adele now after catching sets from Lapsley, Tame Impala, Chvrches, Stormzy, Ady Suileman (a new discovery) and that was in the space of an hour and a half whilst cooking dinner and playing with my dog, which I’ll admit is a different kind of leisure/enjoyment to actually being at the festival and enjoying it live, but it’s equally as valid!

Yesterday I got home from work and caught Muse’s incredibly electrifying set and enjoyed it just as much as I loved their headline set at Reading a few years ago. Except this time I had the benefit of relaxing after a hard days work rather than fighting through that crippling leg fatigue you get from standing up for three days straight, battling through mud from stage to stage.

Plus you get the benefit of cystal clear sound without the person next to you screaming in your ear fairly incoherent lyrics to every song, you get a perfect view of everything happening without camping at the front for the whole day, squashing yourself into a ‘good spot’ and getting thrown about and jabbed by all sorts of other people’s body parts. In the comfort of your own home there aren’t any annoying flags blocking your view or juvenile screams of ‘Dave’ during your favourite song.

Sure, the coverage could do with less presenters talking about stuff and more bands doing their thing but ultimately I can honestly say that I’m probably having almost as much of a good time as I had when I was there watching Coldplay knock it out of the park in 2011, and I’m sure they’ll do it again when I watch them tomorrow from the comfort of my sofa.

Who needs Glastonbury tickets anyway.