The Glastonbury Festival has come under attack by an unlikely source this morning, just before the 1,400,000 tickets go on sale. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose diocese contains the Parish of Glastonbury has gone on an unprecedented attack at what he sees to be the unchristian organisation of this years ticket sales.
“Glastonbury used to be a time of Christian celebration, a space where we could reclaim the summer solstice from those filthy Pagan’s,” the Rt Reverend Simon Price said. “But organising the ticket sales for a Sunday morning is a direct snub at the large number of Christians who will have planned to go to the festival. At 9am on a Sunday morning, I would expect any good Christian to be either at or on their way to Church. And yet this is the time the organisers have picked to sell the tickets. This gives the true believer an impossible dilemma: safeguard their immortal soul, or go to church.”
Glastonbury organisers say that the Bishop is incorrect and that the time was a happy confluence of “easily memorable time” and “low national computer usage stats”. They have already come under fire from consumer groups who fear that if any errors are made with this years hi-tech ticketing scheme it will just be laughed off as “an April fool”. The Citizen’s Advice Bureau have made it clear that despite there being case law to support it, lamely saying “April Fool” after conning someone is a breach of your statutory rights and in contravention to European Law.
The Bishop however was not satisfied by this answer.
“Glastonbury is a holy place, and the wellspring of Christianity in this country. Joseph Of Arimathea himself visited, and it is quite possible that the infant Jesus also came over to what would have been a prototype Glastonbury festival in 10 AD. It is important that Glastonbury retains its roots.”
Time-Team’s Tony Robinson is more sceptical about claims that Jesus had actually visited the Glastonbury Festival.
“There is very little information about the Glastonbury Festival in the early first century AD. Unlike the 4AD festival which we have an almost complete running order for (The Pixies and Throwing Muses headlining), all we know for sure about the 10AD festival is that Hawkwind definitely played. And we only know that because the crashed their Tour Bus at the top of a nearby hill thus creating the monument we know today. Beyond that, whilst it is clear from ticket sales that someone called Joseph A did visit – as under twelves are not ticketed it is impossible to say if Jesus was there. The lack of a Mary A makes the presence of Jesus unlikely. Security was laxer then, but it is unlikely that Mary jumped the fence, and indeed Mary would have been more likely to go to V than Glastonbury.”
The Bishop of Bath and Wells disagreed with Tony Robinson and pointed out that Robinson had made a career of denigrating the office of Bishop Of Bath and Wells. “Tell me when he has proof that the Elizabethan holder of this office actually ate babies and I will listen to his so called science.”
Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis was at pains to try and calm this split saying that tickets should be available when people return from the church, and that they could always call on their mobile phones from church anyway. What is more she was directly involved in getting one of the neighbouring farms to put up a really big cross, similar to the one Jesus was crucified on, so all revilers could be reminded of the sacrifice of Jesus.
“Emily Eavis is the problem,” the Bishop concluded. “Glastonbury used to be the largest church in Britain, but has now been given over to her satanic ways. Her father Michael was a god-fearing man, with a beard a bit like a Quaker who regularly defended the faith. He was even named after St Michael, patron saint of shopkeepers. But there is no St Emily, and when you look closely at her name, you will see that it is just a thinly disguised anagram of Evil. And she really likes Coldplay.”