Oh What A Time... -  #71 Festivals (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 14, 2024

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed from yesterday! This week we’re off to some of the world’s most celebrated festivals. We’re travelling back to 1969 for Woodstock, then off to Edinburgh festival and finishing our odyssey at Glastonbury festival. And this week we’re talking about Elis’ really waterproof jacket and pondering how people in the past could possibly have put up with rain in their (we assume) cow hide outerwear? If you’ve got any idea: [e-mail] If you fancy a bunch of OWAT content you’ve never heard before, why not treat yourself and become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 per month to support the show, you'll get: - two bonus episodes every month! - ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can also follow us on:  X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to part two of our festivals episode. Later, I will be talking about the history of the Glastonbury Festival and first up is Mr Ellis James with Woodstock. Now, when Swansea City got promoted to Division 1 in 1981 at Preston at Deepdale, beating Preston North End, if the amount of people who claimed to have been at that match were actually at that match, it would have had an attendance of about 750,000. The best example I can think of of events that can't, that everyone who claims to be there could never have been there is Woodstock, right? Now if you ask people of a certain generation, were they there? Especially if they're from the US, they're like, oh yeah. Now admittedly, half a million

people did go to Woodstock in August 1969. But if everyone who claims… Half a million! Is that what it was? It was too big. Well, considering Glastonbury's like 200,000, that is incredible. The infrastructure necessary for a festival. It needs a lot, even in 2024. When they're doing Woodstock, there is nothing. And when you do something for the first time, you tend to get it wrong. With Emily

and Michael Eves, they now know how to put Glastonbury on. That's the difference. It was a different experience in 2024 to what it was in 2010. Mason- They'll have a spreadsheet. Mason- Yeah, which was very different. Mason- They'll have some kind of numbers written down somewhere. Mason- You're just updating a few cells here and there. Yeah, very different now to 2000 or certainly to 1990 or 1985. I think the first time I watched Glastonbury on telly would have been about 1994 on Channel 4. It was a very different

beast to how it was now and it's grown. But Woodstock was one of the first of those mega festivals, probably the first one. Now, the thing about Woodstock, to give it its proper name, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair and Aquarium Exposition, because they were twats in the 60s. Mason, laughing. AQUARIUM EXPOSITION? Yeah, an Aquarium Exposition. It was, and remains, a defining milestone for the baby boomer generation in the United States, alongside

other events like such as the Newport Folk Festival where Bob Dylan famously played. Now unlike the Newport Folk Festival which takes place in Newport, Rhode Island, Woodstock didn't happen in Woodstock. The name was borrowed because Bob Dylan, who was the poster boy of 60s counterculture, lived at Woodstock, New York. So Bob Dylan did play the Isle of Wight Festival that year in 1969, but he actually didn't do Woodstock. Even the Isle of Wight Festival, there were 150,000 people. That is massive. That is mad. Wow.

That is mad. So the final act of the festival, the one that properly summed up the counterculture experience of the weekend was Jimi that properly summed up the counterculture experience of the weekend was Jimmy Hendrix, rather than Bob Dylan. Yes, of course. Obviously stunned festival goers when he played because he played that very famous sort of distorted subversive version of Star Spangled Banner. And, you know, people saw it as he was making a point about police violence and Vietnam, because Hendrix had fought in Vietnam. And when I bought The Best of Jimi Hendrix when I was a teenager, that was the final track on the album. And, you know, it was a very, it was a revolutionary,

it was a very provocative thing to play a kind of discordant, atonal version of the national anthem. People found it offensive, they found it very moving. Now others on the bill included the folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who was just 22, Joan Baez, who was 28 and heavily pregnant. Amazing. Can you imagine performing a Woodstock pregnant? Oh man. You would have none of the stuff that you needed to be comfortable. It is hard being heavily pregnant. The idea is like, fine, I'll just get up and do a gig.

I bet as well it would stop. There isn't that much different in facilities backstage versus the rest of the festival site. Oh no, definitely not. So she gave her rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot at 4am. So she gave her rendition of Swing Low Sweet Chariot at 4am and was heavily pregnant. Who is basically performing in a humanitarian crisis? That's what Woodstock is. Whilst trying not to give birth. There was Janis Joplin, Santana Neil Young, Crosby, Stills and Nash, The Who. Very briefly, El, whoever is booking that and deciding that Joan Baez, who's heavily pregnant and is going on at 4am, has to have a long look at themselves in the mirror. I'm

sorry, that is not okay. Shuffle the running order and put the heavily pregnant, brilliant musician on a better spot. At Edinburgh, because obviously you're on eight and so there's a 20 minute turnaround and the next show's on at 20 past nine, the show after that is on at 1040 and you know that 20 minute turnaround is very very tight if you overrun by a few minutes the person's on after you will have a word I think at Woodstock it was a little bit more lax. Famously in live age wasn't it like, everyone had a really regimented slot with

traffic lights. And I guess that is a learning from this era, where it's like, oh, do you want another one? And the next guy's going off. Yeah, it was 18 minutes and if you went over time they just pull the plug. So do you think Joan Byers was meant to go on at like 7pm? A hundred percent. Oh yeah, yeah. And still

She was men ago and she wasn't pregnant Hahahaha So some of the statistics relating to Woodstock are really striking 32 acts, I thought it would have been more than that Nearly 3 million dollars in investment, 742 drug overdoses, 2 deaths They think possibly 2 births, 900 injuries defeat as people went barefoot rather than wander around with muddy shoes, 3,000 patients treated in the medical tent by Dr. William Abruzzi and his staff, a feature documentary

film that was later screened at Cannes, which is absolutely brilliant. It's very long. I'm not sure if years, but it's really good. A brilliant soundtrack album, a state of emergency in Sullivan County and innumerable conceived babies. That is such a 1970s hippie injury. 900 injuries to feet because people weren't wearing shoes. That really captures the vibe at Woodstock. Now Woodstock was the brainchild of four individuals, promoters Michael Lang and Artie Cornfield and New York entrepreneurs Joel Rosenman and John P Roberts and was held on a 600-acre farm at Bethel in upstate New York, belonging to a 49-year-old farmer called Max

Yasker. Now, do you reckon when a half a million people turned up, the four individuals responsible looked at themselves and went, oh shit. You were too big. Shit yourself. Those cars. What do you do? It's the late 60s. You can't just get a megaphone out and go, go away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've bitten off more than we could chew. Hello? Was this a ticketed event? Had they sold those tickets? I think it was. It was a ticketed event, yeah. But the thing is, I've watched a documentary about the early

Islay White festivals and basically they had no control really over the festival site. It was just not, none of these festivals were secure enough. So a lot of people had tickets, but majority didn't. But the Islay White, the first one I think was a free festival, wasn't it? Yeah. But with Glastonbury, like all my mates started going to Glastonbury in 97, 98, none of them had tickets. They were all bunking over the fence. Really?

I don't know, anyone who bought a ticket for Glastonbury until the mid-2000s. Right, okay, yeah, yeah. Because you were just turning up and bunking the fence and that's what everyone did. Whereas now obviously it's impossible to get into Glastonbury if you don't have a ticket. Yasko was the farmer who was a conservative and registered Republican, a dairy farmer who was supportive of the Vietnam War, generally quite opposed to the counterculture movement and they ruined his farm. It is amazing. It is amazing they convinced him. Yeah. His decision to allow the organisers to use his land prompted local resistance,

with signs appearing around Bethel denouncing Max's hippie music festival, but he was non-plussed. The $10,000 in his pocket were what he cared about, and the uproar pushed him closer to the organisers. $10,000 I would say not enough. Not enough. For a ruined farm and now you've seen that the other people have made whatever, with half a million people turning up. As you put it in his speech to the crowds just before Joe Cocker took to the stage and sung the Beatles classic with a little help from my friends, I'm a farmer. I don't like to speak to 20 people at one time, let alone a crowd like

this, but I think you people have proven something into the world. This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place. A half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music and I, God bless you for it." Awww. What a lovely speech. I really wish he added sort of like a naive older man thing where he goes, and the nice thing is, none of you are on drugs. And I think that's just really refreshing. Well, he paid a severe price for allowing Woodstock to go ahead because his neighbours turned against him and in 1971, fed up with the hostility he continued to receive, he

sold the farm and moved to Florida. Really? And then two years later he was dead of a heart attack at the age of 53. Aww. It is, I think, that's the astonishing thing about Glastonbury really, is that he was able to do that year on year. Woodstock is a really famous event, but it only happened once until, infamously, then again in the 90s.

They only managed to pull it off once, and it's still so talked about. The remarkable thing, said the police in the aftermath of the festival, is that there was no violence. So the New York governor, Nelson Rockefellereller was to serve as vice president under Gerald Ford, had wanted to call in 10,000 National Guard troops to control the Crowns, but was persuaded by organizers that that would cause problems rather than resolve them. So as one newspaper put it in September 69, the riots came and the police started telling the newsmen how great the kids have acted. The article continued, Woodstock was the first city of the new culture, adding that music

is the glue that holds the young together. If radical politics, dope, sex and magic are the bricks of this new culture, music is the mortar that cements the different elements into place. Indeed, when police cars got stuck in the mud, festival goers even helped the officers out, as one officer later recalled, it was really amazing. I think a lot of police here are looking at their attitudes. Ah, that's amazing. That is the thing about festivals, even a modern one like Glastonbury, it does survive on the kindness of the individuals who go there.

Because it can turn horrible. And I think, I get that about Woodstock. So at the White House, President Nixon and Henry Kissinger were moaning about what went on at Woodstock. So Kissinger said, you know these kids out here, that was a rock festival, that was about the most exciting thing they could do. Nixon said, you know, when you see these kids and their horrible clothes, the way they dress, the way they stink. And Kissinger said, yeah, well, I'm the way they talk. talk. Because they were from a completely different generation. And the interesting thing with Woodstock is that if you were, say you were 18 in 1969, born in 1951,

and you were at Woodstock. Now Woodstock is now 55 years ago. So if you were looking at 55 years prior to 1969, what would that be? 1914? No one was enjoying themselves in 1969 like they were enjoying themselves in 1914. However, even though festivals have changed, when I see Woodstock, you kind of recognise it. It's a bit more sophisticated and there are charging stations and better toilets and all that kind of stuff. And a lot more security, et cetera. First aid, food options. But it's not so different.

Absolutely. The heart of it feels similar. Yeah. If you did a one-day time machine to Woodstock, you would get it. I'm interested by that quote. He said the farm Max Yasko said, this is the most people in one place in history. Do you think that was true? Well it's pre-Google, so I don't think you'd have been able to fact check it. But I think

if you've got a half a million people on your farm, you probably end up saying, you probably end up using a bit of hyperbole. Let him have that Chris. end up using a bit of hyperbole. You put on a party and there are half a million people have turned up. One of them is Jimi Hendrix. You're live streaming it on Facebook. Him coming on and saying, this is the most people I've ever had in my farm, would not be as impressive a statement. I'm gonna go saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care

and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care.

We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. We care. So to wrap up today's episode on festivals, I am going to talk to you about the history, as I say, of one of my favourite places on earth, the Glastonbury Music Festival. So

how many times have you been, Chris? Because I think you've been up there probably as many times as I have. Yeah, I've been every year since... I think I've missed one since 2010. Yeah, very similar to me. I think since about 2012 I've been going. Have you been out? I've been once. Never again. I'm a bit disappointed by that.

Really? I am disappointed by that. Why? Never ever ever ever again. 2007, it was a wet year, very very wet year. That was an infamously bad year. Well, that's not a fair reading on the festival. Yeah, but I just thought, fuck this.

I'm sad about that. Were you performing in 2007 or were you just pure punter? I was performing, yeah. I was in a band and we played Glastonbury and on the Sunday, I was having such a bad time, I didn't drink. I really wanted to watch The Who. And I didn't drink, so I could basically... I was off as soon as the last chord rung out. And Pete Townsend put his guitar back in the sun. I was in the car. Bye! Will Barron So that is the year of the famous downpour. That is like visiting Pompeii as the volcano explodes and going, this is what Pompeii likes never again.

Mason- There's a lot of lava, isn't there? What's weird though is I know you very well, Tom. I'm always surprised you like Glastonbury because of toilets, showers, etc. Tom- Well, I will still shower every day if I'm in an area where I have access to a shower. Let's say I'm performing, I'm in an artist area, I will do that. If not, I will use a bottle of Evian. Isn't that classy? A two litre bottle of Evian, which I hold above my head and I'll have a full shower with shower gel every morning, properly fresh. No, in my pants. And then I change out of my pants in my tent. Thoughts on that? I think

that's perfectly normal behaviour. Mason Hickman Watch it on telly. Will Barron It's not the same. Mason Hickman I saw a friend of mine. We were camping at the music festival bit of the Estethevod and his girlfriend didn't like him. She liked him to be clean shaven, but the facilities weren't good enough for him to have a shave. And I watched him shave in wine. He got a little... Like Caesar.

Like a Roman. Like a Roman. I think he might have had a CD. He might have been the back of a CD and he had a mug of wine and he was dipping his razor in the wine because he didn't have any water. There's also a problem, if you're using red wine it's hard to know if you've nicked yourself. It was white wine. It wasn't red wine pouring out your neck.

Oh man. I love it so much. It's so much fun. It is pure international waters. You can just enjoy, do what you want. You can just go have, I always think you could probably have, if you were to be able to stretch Glastonbury over 365 days of the year, you could have almost a different day every day of the year over that

weekend. There's so much going on. You'd be dead within a fortnight, Chris. You'd be dead within a fortnight, but there's so much happening and so much you can see. Part of my problem is, my God, I did stand stand up at Hop Farm and I got lost and I couldn't find the fucking exit. And I walked the entire perimeter of the festival. And it was big, like Prince and Lou Reed had been on, like it was a big deal. And I walked the perimeter of Hop Farm and I walked back to where I'd started and

I still hadn't seen my car. And I went up to a bloke, basically a man in a high-vis jacket and I said, just help me. And did he? He did, he drove me on his quad and it took ages. That's emasculating isn't it? Oh yeah, but I was just wanting to go home. The gig hadn't even been that good. In that case, Ellis, maybe Glastonbury isn't for you. But at least, let me tell you the story. Go on, Glastonbury. I'm going to take you back to 1970 when a young farmer called Michael Eves saw a Led Zeppelin gig

advertised as part of the Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music, which is a festival I used to go to as a kid because I grew up in Bath, which was to be held that summer. Now, most people would see a poster advertising Led Zeppelin and think, oh cool, I should go and see Led Zeppelin because they're one of the greatest bands ever. Eva thought maybe I could organize a similar event, just a smaller one maybe, on my farm in the summer sent town of Glastonbury, partly because he had debts he needed cleared. So he saw this poster, his reaction wasn't just, similar event, just a smaller one maybe on my farm in the Somerset town of Glastonbury, partly because he had debts he needed cleared. So he saw this poster, his reaction wasn't just, I'm going to go to this gig.

It just gave him an idea that if you can sell tickets on that number, I have this huge space on my farm. Is there a way of me monetizing that? And can I get myself out of the financial hole I'm in at the moment? That's basically his initial thought process. And so the pop folk and blues festival at Worthy Farm was birthed. So this is in 1970. And over the weekend of the 19th and 20th of September that year, acts booked included the Kinks, Wayne Fontana, the Mindbenders, although they were replaced at the very last minute by Tyrannosaurus

Rex and Mark Bolan as the lead singer. What a line up. Not bad, is it? And tickets cost a quid, which is about £13 today. And didn't you get free milk? Was there free milk with it as well? Have I remembered that?

That's right. And some 1500 people turned up and the bonus was, quite right, they got free milk with their ticket. Which I can say confidently, having been at hot festivals, the one thing I wouldn't want at a festival is a pint of milk in the heat. Not a thirst quencher. I actually did it one year. One year, this is not a Phantom memory, I was camping in Glastonbury and they came round

and they were flogging milk off the back of a tractor trailer and they were just driving around the tents and I was like, come on then, and I necked a little pint of milk and I felt great. I was like, this is actually lovely in the morning as a hangover cure. And so a full pint of thick, claggy milk, a full fat milk in the sun. I think so, yeah. I don't know if I downed it. I drank it, yeah. I don't know if I downed it. I drank it, yeah. So the first event was a success. Such a success that Evis immediately started working on the

1971 repeat, this time calling it the Glastonbury Fair. And this was a deliberate attempt to evoke the traditional English folk song Scarborough Ferry. Where the song, have you heard of it? Are you going to Scarborough Fair? There you go. That is the one. And the reason was, Evis was basically trying to stand Glastonbury as an antidote to these sort of commercialised festivals that were knocking around and dominating the scene at that time. And it was at this second festival that a crucial part of Glastonbury's story was first unveiled. We'd like to try and guess what was

first unveiled at the second festival. Will Barron The pyramid stage? Will Barron Correct. The pyramid stage first appeared. This was inspired by the Giza Pyramids in Egypt. It was designed by a theatre designer. His name was Bill Harkin and it was erected on ley lines running between Glastonbury and Stonehenge, which had been discerned by a team of dowsers, who were those people who used those sort of rods to try and look for … For God's sake.

Not a fan of that, Ellis? For God's sake. Come on, man. For God's sake. Well, Ellis, do you know who joined those dowsers to find the correct point? Which musician was with them? What year? 1971?

Maybe you'll give it more credence now you know who was with them and who helped choose the spot. Yeah. 1971. Mark Bolan. It's a big one. Bigger. Bowie. Correct. David Bowie helped find the spot where they would leave the pyramid stage. Isn't that quite cool? Really? I never knew that. Yeah. He was part of the group walking around with their rods trying to find the place which had the most resonant leyline equality. Yeah, I've heard it was going to be on leylines, but I didn't know David Poway was involved. That's incredible. There he was. And free entry this time brought 12,000 people because Brits love a freebie, it turns out.

This is the point at which I start to panic. Okay. Those sort of numbers? Mason- Because I went to the first latitude. I was doing gigs actually at the first latitude and it's a very different event now. I didn't go to the very first Green Man, but I definitely went to the second or third one. I worked at the fourth one. I worked in the merch tent because my mate was running it. I've been back to Greenland. Greenland's a huge junkyard, as with what it used to be. My friend actually organises Greenland. He's one of the organisers. It's nothing like Glastonbury, but I have seen that festival exponentially grow as I've got older. I think 12,000. That's a jump from 1,500. If I was Michael Eves I'd be like, I'm

bitten off more than I can chew! Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Surely you go from 1,500 to 2,000. Yeah. Spoiler alert, Ellis. Glastonbury gets even bigger than 12,000. Oh yeah, yeah. It must be up to at least 30,000. Well, the Levellers played a quarter of a million didn't they when you were there?

Yeah, famously. Is that true? You know how much Chris loves latitude Ellis? I think this might be before you knew him. Chris got married on the site of latitude. Chris met his wife at latitude, yeah. Met my wife there, got engaged there, married there, consummated the marriage. So there you go.

Well, use your imagination. I'd rather not. I don't want to use my magic. I want you to tell me exactly what happened. Blow by blow. I will only put it out for subscribers. That's how we get on. What a time full timer. You get a blow by blow account of Chris Consummitty's managed marriage.

I think a bigger subscriber benefit is if you're a subscriber you don't have to listen to the blow-by-blow account. The subscribers get the version of this episode that doesn't have that in it. So from these 12,000 people on the second event it just went from strength to strength. You would think wrong. After the second event, EVIS pulled the plug and it was a full decade before Glastonbury returned and cemented itself as an annual fixture on the circuit. It didn't come back until 1981 when the festival sprang back to life as the Glastonbury CND

Festival. A year before that there was a charity event, but that was the first time it came back properly. A full 10 years despite the success of Glastonbury number two. And in truth, in 1981, it was only really organized to show support for the campaign for nuclear disarmament and as a benefit for Midsomerset CND. That was the reason he put it back on again. Tickets, eight quid, 18,000 people turned up this time. They're now seeing bands including New Order, that's a good booking, and on the other side for me, slightly less exciting, a number of political speeches including the historian E.P. Thompson who gave a famously forthright talk on the growth of an

uncaring society. Oh, E.P. Thompson live? The man wrote The Making of the English Working Class. Did he? Come on, E.P. Thompson live? Get stuck in… I've got a copy of The Making of the English working class. Did he? Come on, E.P. Thompson live. Get stuck in. I've got a copy of the making of the English working class. So now you've swung back around to loving Glastonbury because of E.P. Thompson. I'm back in. What have I done? Where have I done that?

What have I done with that? I've got a copy of it. It's got a lovely cover. I'm sure you do. It's an audio format. You don't need to find it now, Ellis. I want it in a podcast. Ellis, I'm going to say it. I'll take your word for it that you've got it. He beats Somsen.

Nobody's listening at home thinking, I really hope he tracks down that copy. So the CND name was retained until 1990 when it was eventually dropped in favour of the Glastonbury Festival of the Contemporary Performing Arts. The title it still holds today, which I think is still a little long, but it is what it is. And entry at the beginning of the 90s, when you were saying your friends were kind of trying to scabby and Ellis, was about 38 quid, which is about £90 a day. But over the coming decade, it would rise steeply. So by the time we got to the 25th anniversary, which is 1995, the entry fee had almost doubled. And by that

time there were some 80,000 tickets shifted. It sold out then in around about four weeks and they heard acts such as, this is quite a line up, Oasis, Lightning Seeds and the Stone Roses. Mason-I remember watching that year, I think Izzy went to that one. I remember watching that one on telly. For a point, which of those acts did not perform? Stone Roses. Yeah, and who replaced them? Pulp.

Replaced by Pulp. Correct. And Pulp did that legendary set, which is worth watching back on YouTube, one of the all-time class and resets. And even the torrential rain Ellis was at. No, all my mates were. I remember and there's that famous picture on the front cover of the NME with that girl smiling and she's got mud slash feces on her teeth. Absolutely. I cannot understand the people who are diving head first into the mud and laughing. I've seen that before. It's hilarious in the moment, but the aftermath must be horrendous. What are you doing? It's panic-inducing.

Surely that just ruins your day. Will Barron Yeah, it ruins you again. Will Barron If you're 100% caked in the mud. Will Barron There's not enough Evian on Earth. Will Barron Not in 1997 either. Will Barron No, I remember that. That was the first, because I'd always watched it. The Britpop Glastonbury's were always very sunny. And then by 1997, I remember sitting down to watch it

and just, it was a news story because it was so wet. And then the year after was wet as well in 98. And yeah, I remember people getting E. coli and stuff because they were sort of diving in the air and there was cow mess. So 1997, as I say, torrential rain, the site is turned into a quagmire. It's all broadcast on the BBC during their first ever live TV broadcast that year that coincided with that terrible event. Joe Wiley, John P. presenting it. A Radiohead headline, 1997. Amazing performance. Even though it had been weather-wise, this horror show. When it returned in 1998, Glastonbury was even bigger, even more popular and it broke the 100,000 crowd mark for the very first time in 1998. People watching Robbie Williams, Bob Dylan, Blur, Primal Scream. And today, it's now more than double

that. So Glastonbury 2024, which Chris was at, saw a crowd in excess of 200,000 people and a television audience of over 20 million people in the UK alone. That's incredible, isn't it? And it's all sprung, of course, from Michael Ebers seeing a Led Zeppelin poster and thinking, I might have a bit of that. That feels like something. Will Barron I mean, I found it hard enough organising a wedding. Will Barron Ellis and I very briefly ran a comedy gig in a coffee shop in Cardiff. And I think it was the most stressful two months of our life.

Will Barron We put on two gigs. So it's two gigs. That would have been eight acts in total and I cried 10 times. Will Barron But it wouldn't change it for the world. Will Barron We had some great nights. Will Barron Yeah, we did. Will Barron I hope Oh What A Time plays the podcast stage at Glastonbury Festival. Will Barron Is it a podcast stage at Glastonbury?

Yeah. Can you imagine the crowd? It'd be like Pulp in whatever year it was. History! Radiohead 97, the crowd going absolutely wild. I'd walk on stage and I'd say, ladies and gentlemen, the guy to my right, Tom Crane. If he was given a one- day time machine, can you believe it? History fans? He wouldn't go back to watch E.P. Thompson speak at the 1981 Glastonbury

Festival. He is a fraud. And I've stood there on stage having my third Evian shower of the day, just openly washing myself in front of our listeners because I feel that close. Why didn't you want to watch EP, Tom Sears, with the greatest Marxist historians ever? You won't come. Skyl Mill, meanwhile, is face down because someone's handed him something in a field and he thought, what the hey? We're doing our bowels at the end of the performance, crowd going wild, we look at

the back of the tent and just there we see Jeremy Bentham being carried out on someone's shoulders into the night. Then you're back on the Monday, you're watching back on iPlayer. You're watching the Oasis reunion at Glastonbury, there's Jeremy Bentham down the front. He's bobbing past him, Ben's getting on the Sunday night. Ben's losing his mind to Faithless. I can't get no sleep. Yeah, we should do that, Chrissie. You absolutely sold that to me. Anyway, I'm going to have to say it.

There we are then. There's my catchphrase from the 2011 Edinburgh Festival, soz if the very very iratianist who reviewed me for the Daily Telegraph is listening yeah what can I say it's one of those phrases from childhood that has really stuck with me. We hope you enjoyed this episode if you'd like the episodes all in one go, then why don't you become an O-Water Time full-timer? Subscribers, only 4.99 a month. You will also get bonus episodes,

two bonus episodes a month. You'll get first dibs on live tickets, all sorts of extra stuff. It really is well worth it. Also, it just turns you into a really good person. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a bit like life assurance, but for being a really good person. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a bit like life assurance, but for being a really good person. And you'll become one of my favourites. You won't even need to tell people, people

will just sense it as well. It'll change your walk just enough that people know you've done something great. It's worth saying that our last episode that we did for subscribers, a double episode on Imagine Futures, which I would say is honestly one of my favourite episodes we've ever done. Yes that is a fun episode, that is a great one yeah. Yeah how the people of the past imagined the future and it's very very entertaining so yes I highly recommend you listen to that it's one of the best podcast episodes we've ever done I think and I'd like to thank Darrell Leeworthy our great historian researcher

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