"Extraordinary Festival Stupidity Examples" because that's also an unbelievably stupid thing to do. And selfish. Just... wow.

Very foolishly I left a £1 note in the back pocket of a pair of jeans at Knebworth.On returning to my tent I found It replaced with a 50p coin and a note apologising for It's theft and explaining that the thief had found himself/herself in dire need at the time but subsequently had discovered that they did not need the full £1 and had returned to leave me the change and to say sorry.

(The kids were tripping over them indeed. Why do some parents think the work revolves around their offspring? And why should we suffer for their kids stupidity?)

... but the last time I was at Glastonbury it was one of the miserable flooded ones. As Mrs Ganglesprocket couldn't get time off work until the Friday we found ourselves camped about a mile from anywhere. Just getting to any event at all involved an exhausting trudge through extremely sticky mud, which prevented much sitting down. My memory is of being extremely tired all the time.

We were in a tea tent and lo and behold two seats were available. I grabbed them and my GLW went to buy some tea. As I sat there a fuckwit in a pirate costume came up to me;
"Is this seat taken?"
"Yes, I'm sorry it is. My wife is just buying us some tea."
Away he went with the seat.
"Oi! OI! I said that seat is taken."
"There's no one sitting there man. Chill out, this is Glastonbury"
By this point I was quivering with rage. In my most angry sounding Glasweigan tones I yelled something along the lines of:
"IF YOU DONT PUT THAT F&*£ING SEAT BACK DOWN I WILL F&*£ING KILL YOU, YOU B@STARD"
Fuckwit in a pirate costume "Chill out man, have your seat, come on be reasonable, this is Glastonbury. By the way I'm traveling to South America in a few weeks to take part in direct action to protect the rainforest. Do you fancy making a donation?"

That was the last time I went to Glastonbury. It was the floods rather than idiots dressed as pirates which did it for me though.

.. said they'd come and play a few tunes for us on Friday night and then didn't show.

with a well known punk poet and this guy took all his clothes off.

Buxton to be precise.

I was over there last week to attend one of the literature talks that run alongside the Opera and stopped for a coffee at the small stand in the Pavillion Gardens.

First example was a fat man in the queue who was belittling the young girl on the counter who couldn't make a sandwich to his specific requirement as they were all pre made pannini.Regret not telling him to shut up.

Collected coffee, went out into the garden and all the tables were occupied by singles or couples. Each of the tables are substantial with 5 or 6 chairs. Anyway I asked one woman if she minded if I shared the table, her answer was that she did.

So I tried another table, not adjacent to hers and asked the same of a bored looking man on his own who gave every appearance of being about to leave. He replied "if you really must". I sat down, left him in peace and 2-3 minutes later he jumped up with his half full coffee cup to move to another table that had just become available!.

All this happened in less than 10 minutes, more ill manners and selfishness than I saw in four days at Latitude.

who shove their way to the front of a stage and then erect a bloody great flag to wave. Thus pissing off several thousand people behind them all at the same time.

Rolling Stone magazine sent a reporter to the Woodstock festival to try to establish whether hippies were changing the world or simply lying around off their tits in a sea of filth.

The reporter came across a young family outside a teepee. The gentleman of this hippie coven explained at some length that he and his hairy brethren were out to change society from top to bottom and establish a new code of living. He went on to complain bitterly that they weren't just dropouts with a tenuous grip on reality, at which point his children started trying to collapse the teepee. "Bilbo! Frodo! Stop messing about!" was their father's stern response...

Not quite a ‘festival’ but I was up in Newcastle last Saturday, having stayed over after seeing the Pet Shop Boys the previous night – and thought I’d take myself over the free stage outside The Sage for their annual Americana Festival.

The number of people who were there seemingly just to sit in a circle and natter amongst themselves while the acts were on stage was annoying. Many were up and down on a constant wander to and from the bar, and one group arrived with a large dog that just about trampled over one couples picnic.

I left after an hour – couldn’t find a decent spot to just sit and listen to the music, as those who have seemingly have no interest in the music always seem to arrive an hour ahead and find the best spots.

okay, it's not a music festival but particularly at Fringe venues and especially where there are big temporary bars (Pleasance Courtyard, prime example), ladies from "somewhere down south" whose husbands generally look after the business of wine waiters and sauvignon blanc suddenly have to deal with the apparently random scrum around a bar ... which is, of course, not random at all

they have nae idea and seem to think that being blonde, carrying a twenty quid note and shouting "barman, barman" is the way to go ... no sense of personal space, no sense of who arrived when, where other people are standing, making a mental picture of the actual queue in their head, relating it to the speed of service from barstaff etc ... clueless, and rude ... it would be like me marching into their kitchens and switching off the Archers just before the bit where everyone finds out that Kenton really did shag Kirsty ...

Outrageous behaviour, presumably their tent wasn't very well secured to the ground?

When I was setting up at Glastonbury this year, I saw a full tent blow high across the campsite like it was a kite! A first.

...as a pretty regular festival-goer, my understanding was/is that proper festival etiquette is to, where possible, pitch your tent using the minimum amount of guy ropeage you can get away with. Obviously this depends on the type of tent you have and the weather conditions (some are ok with this approach, others absolutely need to be fully roped to stand up straight).

This is not really for the benefit of little kids, more a self-defence technique to stop random passers-by (who may be challenged by the dark, the drink or the drugs) from tripping over your guy ropes (and falling over your tent) on their way home between tents that will inevitably be pitched too close together.

But the lady next door should have talked to you about this before unilaterally unpegging your guys!

spotty twots pissing in plastic pint pots and then lobbing said item as far forward as they can into the festival crowd ( and then bravely hiding behind their mates). My immediate & niave thought was "with queues for the bars that long why would anyone waste lager by throwing it".
"Why I oughta etc etc"

Maybe Latitude next year. I'm storing up a little list of "don'ts".

Venue: Pleasance Courtyard. Busy for all of August, but one does not forget basic courtesy if one is not an arsehole.

Two minor celeb encounters ensue.

Best: Jenny Eclair

"Excuse me, is that seat taken?". [Apologetic smile] I'm afraid it is, yes, sorry. "Oh, okay, thanks." [Big beaming smile anyway as she moves off]. We have only engaged as human beings for about three seconds but it was exemplary interaction.

Worst: David Fucking Strassman

Who sat in my bench seat facing the other way to talk to *his* mates, or schmooze to some media whore, or some such thing, while I had nipped to the toilet. Completely ignored all attempts of my mates to point this out. Completely ignored *me* when I tried to sit back there again. Completely ignored me when I sat down anyway and side-bombed him, trying to knock the twat off *my* seat like a badly-moustached skittle. I think he did piss off eventually, leaving me in no doubt that making my life's work that of destroying his career would be a valid use of whatever days I may have left to me. I still, to this day, bristle at any (rare, and increasingly so) mention of the man's name.

I've never been all that arsed about Jenny Eclair's act, but her manners and personability were absolutely beyond reproach. There may have been a bit of PR in there, but there's no harm in that. Whereas you may not even know who David Fucking Strassman is (he's an American ventriloquist) which I would posit speaks volumes in itself.

D x

I've just got back from Camp Bestival, and it was mostly wonderful.
The only un-wonderful bit was my tent neighbours.

First night, 4am, I was woken up by our neighbours staggering home drunk and bellowing at each other. Now, I happily accept that noise is part and parcel of the festival experience, but this was a bit much... they were actually shouting at each other. And as I said, this was at 4am and the rest of the campsite was quiet. They were loud enough to wake the four of us up.

Thinking that they'd settle down soon, I lay there. And lay there.

After 20 minutes of bellowing, I'd had enough, popped on my wellies and popped round to their tent to have a friendly word.

"Hi!" I said smilingly. "Please could you keep your voices down a bit? It's a bit loud and you've woken us all up".

Nothing was said in return, so I padded home. The noise didn't diminish, "Ah well" I thought, and after they quietened down (another twenty minutes later), I fell asleep again.

Next day, I came back to our tent to discover that someone had let down most of our guy ropes and pulled out the tent pegs (happily the tent was still standing).

Then at 4am the next morning, I was woken up by the tent neighbours coming home loudly... then I was treated to them doing bellowed impressions of me, ("HOW DARE YOU COME TO A FESTIVAL AND HAVE FUN? HOW DARE YOU LAUGH"), along with a detailed and unflattering critique of my looks and personality, followed by gleeful cackling about how they'd taught me a lesson by adjusting my guy ropes for me.

I decided there was nothing to be gained from confronting them, so I just had to lay there while they went on and on. I couldn't even get to sleep when they eventually stopped as I was so wound up.

I then spent most of the next day paranoid that they were going to do something else to our tent while we were gone (happily they didn't).

Looking back on it, it wasn't that bad - fiddling with guy ropes is hardly the most malicious thing to do - but the whole thing really stressed me out. It actually wasn't so much the guy ropes, more the fact that they were so nasty about me (I'm pretty thin-skinned), it was definitely the low point of that festival.