Glastonbury Finally Faces Its Portaloo

By · October 18, 2010 at 9:42 am · 4 Comments · Latest News · Report an error ·

loo.jpg Or not, it seems. The long-running music festival is due to take a year off in 2012 and it’s allegedly because an unprecedented demand for portable loos at the Olympics has pushed prices up though organiser Michael Eavis says it’s actually down to a lack of police available for the event. At least if all the lavatories migrate to London, the 2012 Olympics might not experience the kind of lavatorial issues seen in Delhi for the Commonwealth Games though cultural tips for international visitors to London must inevitably include the concept of queuing to spend a penny. Photo by mrdamcgowan.

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  • http://undefined dukest

    neither of those things is the main reason, they have a year off every 5 or so years to give the land a break (2006 being the last one).
    lack of toilets (possibly) and police (do they actually have that many there?) are incidental but i doubt would cause cancellation if they werent already having the year off.

  • DeanN

    I was thinking the same thing. Remember reading an interview around the time of the 2009 festival with Michael Eavis, who said they’d have two more (2010 & 2011) and then have the customary year’s break.

  • http://www.oxocubeeditorial.com/ Beth Torr

    Some of the reports suggest that they planned a break in 2011 but pushed it to 2012 because of the Olympics, but elsewhere it says it was always planned for then so conflicting reports really. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do the portaloo pun.

  • markle

    I went along to a Q&A with Michael Eavis in the Greenfields in 2009 – he talked about this then. As mentioned above, they have a fallow year every 5-6 years, and 2011 was originally going to be their next break.

    However, even back then, it was clear that all of the site infrastructure needed wasn’t going to be available in 2012. It’s not just the portaloos and police, it’s also all of the temporary fencing, trakway, security staff and so on… Plus I’m sure that the Olympics gives many of the people involved in Glastonbury to earn a bit of money by working on the Olympics sites. All in all, it just makes sense that 2012 is taken as a fallow year.

    What will be interesting to see will be if the Olympics also has a discernible impact on the other mainstays of the summer festival season. By virtue of its size, Glasto needs to hire in more infrastructure and staff than the others – but that’s not to say that the others will be unaffected.

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