How To Go To Glastonbury If You Didn't Get A Ticket

Getting a Glastonbury ticket is a massive fucking ball-ache. You need to register in advance, plan the world’s three most mundane forms of attack (the internet, the phone, your friend’s laptop) and wake-up before nine on a Sunday morning. And even then there’s no guarantee that spending the next three hours physically assaulting your keyboard will even result in a working webpage, let alone a ticket. The response on social media on ticket morning comprises the same three things each year: “FUCK! I AM GOING TO GLASTONBURY!” “GLASTONBURY CAN FUCK OFF, IT’S SHIT.” And… “FUCK SEE TICKETS!” The third response is the most frequent. It doesn’t matter what sort of precautionary measures they bring in, the point still stands: if you have millions of people trying to get on the same page at exactly the same time, something will go wrong. The page breaks, your basket freezes or your card details come back incorrect, all transpiring to cause a whole world of butthurt for everyone involved. Relationships have broken up as a result. Keyboards have been decimated with rolling pins. Year-long plans have been cast aside, because you couldn’t press the refresh button fast enough. A few hundred thousand people somehow manage to get tickets, of course. But they always sell out in record time; managing to disappear in something seemingly impossible, like fourteen minutes: otherwise known as the time it takes your browser to load the Glastonbury website. For the majority on the wrong end of the refresh race; it’s not the end of the world. Even if you left Sunday morning ticketless, you can still get into Glastonbury. Here’s how… Try Again

Glastonbury is famous for three things: the music, the freedom, and the cold-sore of middle-tier celebrities that hang out in the backstage bar. Last year, we saw people like Dick and Dom, Sophie Ellis Bextor, and John Humphreys gallivanting near the arse of the VIP Bar; slamming ciders and probably taking bumps off someone’s backstage pass in Prangtanamo Bay (the name the celebs give their secret hang-out spot). The good thing about middle-tier celebrities is that they love making friends with other drunk floosies. So, if you have no shame, the best advice would be befriending one of these little buggers and hoping they like you long enough to invite you down in June. Try hanging outside the Groucho on weeknights. Tweet Luke from The Kooks saying he made you see funk in a new light. Find out Jameela Jamil’s mobile number. Send Ralf Little a dick pic. Whatever – it doesn’t matter. All you need to do is ensure that when you arrive next year you’re arriving freshly-showered from the hotel with your CBBC Presenter boyfriend or street-style blogger girlfriend in tow. Break in

You can easily get into most festivals - as shown by Marcus Haney, a guy who’s made a documentary about breaking into everything from Coachella to the Grammys. Problem is, Glastonbury is notoriously difficult. Even Marcus only managed to get in by sneaking on Mumford & Sons tour bus and we wouldn’t wish that on our worst enemies. Back in the olden days people would dig under the fence and tunnel straight through. This is pretty much impossible now. One: because there’s, like, three fences. And two: have you ever tried building a fucking tunnel? That said, a few people do manage to get in each year. Examples include: hand-gliding in, dressing as staff, or locating the “secret spot” that Michael Eavis is rumoured to purposefully leave for would-be infiltrators. So feel free to try your luck with any of those if you want to be the most unchill person ever. You know the ticket profits go to charity, right?

Volunteer

OK, so the great thing about Glastonbury – aside from the obvious stuff like drugs, people getting along, feeling happy, drugs etc – is that it’s run by normal people. Most of these folk are employed purely on the basis that they turn up to three eight-hour shifts and in return get a free ticket. A lot of organisations offer volunteering at Glastonbury. You can apply for jobs with Oxfam, decide to be a litter picker or make toast for people on awful acid trips. Alternatively, you could work as a member of the Green Police: a version of the actual police whose primary power is to make you feel guilty for pissing in the bushes. All the information is on the Glastonbury website, here. Perform

A shit-tonne of people play at Glastonbury each year and, if you’re lucky, one of them could be you. We’re not necessarily recommending you knock up a post-punk EP in the next few months. There are much less riskier options. For example, you could rebrand yourself as a drag queen called Arabella Trashcock and apply for the cabaret marquee. You could learn to stick ten inch nails through your knees and hit up the circus area. Or you could grease up some glutes with tea tree oil in the Greenfields. It depends on your interests but hitting up the people who run each area, showing them some of your work and asking to get involved could be a good bet. Work

You could always become a journalist. Don’t worry that you’re not a journalist already and can’t write anything - none of us can. Journalists haven’t been able to write since 2003. And besides Glastonbury is in June which means you have eight months to build a semi-believable career. The festival actually has its own on-site newspaper - published daily - and they’re bound to need a lackey to do vox pops.

Set Up Camp a Few Weeks Before

Once you’re in, you’re in. Right?

Follow Ryan on Twitter: @RyanBassil