I wanna take you to...

It's another snippets post, dear reader...

• You couldn't pay me to go there news: Glastonbury Festival 2025 - the 55th anniversary event - opened its doors yesterday. As one might imagine, the queues appear to resemble the Seventh Gate of Hell - let alone the prospect of camping for five days in a muddy field with all that racket going on!

• Brainbox news: A stash of academic papers by mathematician and gay figurehead Alan Turing - that were rescued from being thrown away in a house clearance - sold for £465,400 at auction!
• Queeny goings-on news: New plans for a memorial to HM The Queen in Green Park have been unveiled by design contest winner Lord Norman Foster + Partners. The Duke of Edinburgh is also to be honoured with a statue as part of the memorial - looking bored and grumpy, no doubt.
• Awww news: A pair of young brown bears escaped from their enclosure at Wildwood Trust's site in Ottery St Mary in Devon - and promptly headed straight for the food store, where they ate a week's worth of honey. Then went back to bed. Typical teenagers.
• Papa Don't Preach news: Madonna has found out she is related to the Pope(!!), and tweeted: "Would it be possible to meet up one day to discuss some important matters? I’ve been excommunicated three times. It doesn’t seem fair. Sincerely, Madonna.”
• And finally: There are plans afoot to open a gay bar at Chicago O'Hare airport! I wonder if their punters will be restricted to 100ml or less of fluids?

We know a song about that, don't we?

Electric Six - Gay Bar

And the weather? Warm and muggy, thanks - and another "heatwave" on the way for the weekend, apparently.

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STOP PRESS - [20:00] Nuclear Wintour news:

Queen-of-fucking-everything Dame Anna Wintour has made the shock announcement she is quitting her role as editor-in-chief at American Vogue!

Sinitta at Glastonbury?!

Lady Gaga and Pulp are both rumoured to be performing surprise Glastonbury sets. But the anguish of the audience if these artists strode onstage instead would be a joy:

Celine Dion

What Glastonbury audience wouldn’t want to see this Vegas legend belt out My Heart Will Go On? You came to see Kneecap and Charli XCX? Tough shit, you’re getting an hour of overwrought ballads at top volume which will inevitably remind you of Titanic, the disaster which a wet Glastonbury resembles.

Chris de Burgh

Oh, the confusion on thousands of faces as Chris launches Into Lady in Red. Is this ironic? Has my mum arrived to pick me up? The selection of mid-tempo ballads will grind on until the big finish of A Spaceman Came Travelling, about an alien bringing a message of peace at the birth of Jesus. Perfect for Glasto because you’d need to be on drugs.

Morrissey

It’s time for rehabilitation after all that right-wing business, and where better to begin? A Trump-style perspex box to deflect the bottles of piss, and a big red ‘STOP NOW’ sign for when he starts to express his racist views, and it’s a career relaunch! Until he says the racist things regardless.

Brian May

Not Queen, who presumably have been asked. Brian’s solo stuff, beginning with Driven by You, written for a Ford advert in 1991, and the iconic theme to Star Fleet. And when he does some Queen stuff, the whole of Worthy Farm will be rocking out to ‘Fat bottomed girls, you make the rockin’ world go round!’ Or just standing there awkwardly. It’s a toss-up.

Kanye West

Played before, a decade ago, but Ye’s changed since then. Notably he’s become a swastika T-shirt selling Nazi who stalks his ex-wife and forces his current wife to walk around nude. Performing new track Heil Hitler would have the crowds battering the fence down like in the 90s, but this time from the inside to escape.

Sky

The prog rock outfit that included legendary classical guitarist John Williams and Curved Air’s Francis Monkman were terminally uncool even in the 70s. So it would be absolutely joyous to watch hip young Glastonbury audiences enduring rock versions of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Not so ‘rizz’ now, are you, young persons?

Whitesnake

Surprise sets are meant to be surprising, and you don’t get much more unexpected than 80s hair rockers Whitesnake who never understood why Spinal Tap was meant to be funny. Declared to be a success after the event by Emily Eavis because it directly precipitates a sales spike for beanburgers.

Sinitta

Cheesy retro acts are looked on kindly at chilled-out Glastonbury, but Stock, Aitken and Waterman product Sinitta? So Machowas mechanical electro-pop at its worst, and horribly dated now. It’s unlikely attendees would warm to lyrics like ‘I’m tired of taking the lead, I want a man who will dominate me’ unless Sabrina Carpenter sings them.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Wet totty, music, mud and old boozers

Gratuitous totty shot? As if. Happy 30th birthday today to Ansel Elgort [whose name actually sounds like an anagram]!

Another "snippets" post today, dear reader...

• Good news: One of our favourite shows on radio Friday Night is Music Night - the world's longest-running live orchestral music radio programme - [which was unceremoniously moved to Sundays, and then surreptitiously killed-off last November by the gnomes at BBC Radio 2] will be revived by Auntie Beeb's classical station Radio 3 this April! I cannot wait...
• Dancing in a muddy field news: Dua Lipa (yawn), Coldplay (even bigger yawn!) and SZA (nope, not a clue; sounds like an energy drink) have been announced as headliners at this year's Glastonbury Festival. Even the news that Shania Twain will be taking the closing top-of-the bill "Legends" slot, or the fact that Cyndi Lauper's there as well (for the first time), would ever tempt me to go - even if the tickets hadn't sold-out completely within half an hour of being put on sale last Autumn!
• More muck news: The UK is apparently in the middle of National Compost Week, which is literally a load of old crap. Recycled by worms, of course.
• More good news: Our "house band" here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox are back in the UK this May, and - thanks to a Ticketmaster voucher card from Baby Steve and Houseboy Alex for my 60th last year - Madam Arcati and I have booked to go and see them live at the prestigious London Palladium!
• And, finally: Maverick Soho members' club The Groucho [named after the Groucho Marx quote: “I don’t want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member”], second home of the likes of Terry Pratchett, Francis Bacon, Jeffrey Bernard, Jarvis Cocker, Anthony Bourdain, Lily Allen, Melvyn Bragg, Blur’s Alex James, Rachel Weisz, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Robbie Coltrane, Nick Grimshaw, Stephen Fry, Julie Burchill and even Harry Styles - which we were honoured to visit way back in 2009 - has opened its very first "out-of-town" outpost near Wakefield in Yorkshire!

And the weather? More Spring-like than it has been in ages...

Arise...

...Companion of Honour Dame Shirley Bassey, Dame Jilly Cooper (for services to the "bonk-buster" novel?), [founder of Glastonbury Festival] Sir Michael Eavis, [founder of that other great British institution Wetherspoons] Sir Tim Martin.

Also honoured: Dame Judith Weir [Master of the King's Music], author Sir Alexander McCall Smith, former Home Secretary Sir Sajid Javid, Knight Grand Cross Sir Ridley Scott and Dame Grand Cross Dame Margaret Beckett.

Among those awarded Commander of the British Empire (CBE): lyricist Don Black, TV chef Paul Hollywood, former rugby players turned fundraisers Rob Burrow and Kevin Sinfield, former England footballer Peter Shilton, TV historian Professor Ronald Hutton and author Kate Mosse; Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) include legendary DJ Tony Blackburn, singer Leona Lewis, business guru Mary Portas, soprano Carolyn Sampson and England football team captain Millie Bright; Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) include DJ Steve Wright, actress Emilia Clarke, broadcaster James Whale and England footballers Lauren Hemp and Mary Earps.

Congratulations, one and all!

New Year Honours list 2024 in full

You took a pedestal and put me on it

Look out Glastonbury - Miss Ross is on her way!

Yes, the living legend that is Diana Ernestine Earle Ross will be occupying the much-vaunted "Legends" slot on the Pyramid Stage at Worthy Farm, only three years after she was first announced [thanks to the dreaded 'Rona]! Ahead of tomorrow's appearance, however, the great lady has been touring the country as part of her "Thank You" tour, not least two nights at the capacious O2 Arena (formerly the Millenium Dome) this week...

From the review by Mark Beaumont in the Evening Standard:

...As her brass fanfare reached crescendo and broke into I’m Coming Out, she flung off her voluminous shawl of curly tangerine frills with such a flourish that her microphone had to be rescued from the front row. One way or another, this Motown legend’s vocals would be a knockout...

...With the first of three gown changes – various sequinned spectacles and one lime green Scarlett O’Hara – she launched into Chain Reaction, Upside Down and Take Me Higher, freshening her throat with a spray she dubbed “Entertainer’s Secret” and encouraging camp dance-offs in the aisles. Though some of the livelier tunes smacked a little of karaoke, Ross’s voice felt reborn on piano-led ballads such as If We Hold on Together and Theme From Mahogany (Do You Know Where You’re Going To), and positively powerful by the time of her showstopping take on Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, backed with visuals of Ross in her glory days. Whenever she struggled, as on I’m Still Waiting, the crowd carried the melodies, swept along on a communal will to share such classic songs, and the moment, with this still-gleaming star...

...Six decades in, she continues to relish her music, and remains ravishing in performance. Glastonbury, where she plays the legend’s slot this weekend, should break out its dancing galoshes.

Gawd bless 'er - let's hope [much like our own legend and Patron Saint Dame Shirley Bassey, who appeared in the same slot way back in 2007] she packed some suitably jewel-encrusted wellies!

Diana Ross - Chain Reaction

Glastonbury Festival 2022

Not the 'Healing Field'

A man with tickets for this year’s Glastonbury has been brought to his knees by an incredible, overwhelming wave of relief.

Tom Booker of Manchester glanced at the calendar, realised he should have been setting off for the festival tomorrow and was staggered by the sheer joy of not having to.

He said: “If not for the pandemic, I’d be in a tent tomorrow night. And every night until next Tuesday. Surrounded by dickheads and caked in my own filth. And now I’m not.

“Who was on this year? Kendrick Lamar, I’d have had to watch that. And Taylor Swift, even though by Sunday night all I’d really want to be doing is sitting in my car, imagining I’m in traffic, leaving.

“God, the drugs I’d have to take. The surprising art-house cabaret I’d have had to stumble upon. The pleasure I’d have had to feign. All gone.

“Instead I get to stay at home, sit in the sun in my own garden, urinate in my own clean porcelain toilet, pour myself cold drinks from my own fridge and not have to watch sunrise from anywhere, least of all the 'Healing Field'.

“Watch it on the telly? Bollocks I will.”

The Daily Mash

Of course.

[The BBC's going overboard this weekend with something called "The Glastonbury Experience". I expect that means people will be encouraged to sit in their gardens, stoned, listening to muffled speakers half a mile away, eating nasty vegan dishes and shitting in a bush.]

'Cause you like it like this

A countdown to Gay Pride in London this Saturday would not be complete without an appearance by Our Princess Kylie - and her triumphant "Legends" slot at Glastonbury on Sunday (hers was, by many accounts, the single biggest audience of the whole festival, even beating those for the headliners Stormzy, The Killers and The Cure) provides us with the perfect excuse (if any were needed)!

After a set that covered her entire three-decade career as Australia's (and her adopted mother country the UK's) greatest ever pop diva, with an array of hits from I Should Be So Lucky and Locomotion through Confide in Me and Better the Devil You Know, her duet with Nick Cave (who appeared with her live on stage) Where the Wild Roses Grow to Can't Get You Out Of My Head (with another guest Chris Martin of Coldplay), Slow, All The Lovers, Dancin' and many more, came this one - with which she ended the show on an incredible high:

Kylie Minogue - Spinning Around (Glastonbury 2019)

Even the normally po-faced "serious muso journal" the NME loved it!

It was a triumph.

[...so much so, her new greatest hits compilation Step Back in Time is heading for the #1 slot in the UK charts this week!]

Avoid skinny jeans and hotpants

My idea of Hell

The middle-aged guide to Glastonbury
Headed to Glastonbury with a bad back and a heavy heart? Worried you’ll be raving about how great Stormzy is only to be politely told you’re watching Sean Paul? Follow our guide:

Take creature comforts

Take a tip from The Walking Dead and hole up in a camper van. You’ll earn the contempt of younger festival goers but unlike them won’t be half-dead from exhaustion and will actually enjoy some of the music you’ve paid £250 for.

Resist the temptation to be a festival veteran

Try not to reminisce about Jesus Jones’ blistering 1990 set unless you want to appear incredibly ancient, like an old-time gold prospector or Gandalf.

Pretend to like the latest musical darlings

Impress the young by familiarising yourself with acts like Sunflower Bean and Headie One, even if you struggle to see what the point is. If by coincidence you find yourself watching them, just conceal some wireless headphones under a beanie hat and listen to golden oldies from yesteryear by The Prodigy.

Dress practically

Avoid skinny jeans and hotpants if you’ve developed a bit of middle-aged chunkiness. You’ll look an idiot and find it impossible to get your bank card out of your pocket to buy overpriced falafels and hippy hats.

Schedule naps

Keep nipping back to the tent or camper van to rest your old bones. You can easily slip away by saying you’re seeing a world music act no sane person would be interested in, e.g. a Macedonian bongo orchestra.

Don’t worry about being old

The truth is that pop’s middle-aged now. Expect a surprise appearance by a haggard-looking Damon Albarn, or finding yourself in a queue to buy a decent Riesling with Radio 2 hottie Jo Wiley, aged 53.

The Daily Mash

Of course.

Right on cue, here's one of the festival's bright young rising stars from 2007...

Shirley Bassey live at the Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury Festival 2019 official website

Dolly and the dog

From ITV News website:

Dolly Parton has pledged to adopt a dog named after her that was abandoned at Glastonbury festival if her owners don't come forward.

The country legend, who stole the show with her first ever Glastonbury performance last week, said she would step in if no one collects her from the Happy Landings shelter near Worthy Farm where she is currently being held.

The Nine to Five singer, 68, said: "I had my manager call the Happy Landings animal shelter to make sure the dog is being treated and cared for properly.

"At this time, nobody has claimed the dog and the dog is in great hands at the shelter. I will take the dog home to America if nobody claims her within a reasonable amount of time."

The audience watching Dolly’s performance reached in excess of 150,000 people, while the BBC has reported the largest ever viewing audience of Glastonbury tuned in to see Dolly take the stage during their live broadcast.

A true superstar...

Dolly Parton performs Jolene at Glastonbury 2014

Dolly Parton official website

A cup of ambition

Dolly Parton has been contracted to play just the bit of 9 to 5 that everyone knows for the duration of her Glastonbury set.

The country star will sing the line about pouring herself a cup of ambition before moving straight into the middle of the song.

She will be allowed to dance on stage, as long as her footwork is straightforward enough for a layperson to replicate after eight pints of cider.

A Glastonbury spokesman said: “This contract will stop any punters from getting bored and throwing cans of Carling at her head.

“We’ve also had to warn her not to talk about her children’s literacy programme, otherwise the crowd will get restless and leave to get their faces painted or to see if there’s anyone you can still buy M-Cat from.”

Festivalgoer Nikki Hollis commented “Acts should be forced to sign contracts like this. When I saw Blondie at Latitude, they were shit – they didn’t play the one song I know, "I Touch Myself".

“We had been really looking forward to hearing it. Blondie should listen to her fans, and do her research.”

Dolly Parton said: “I am thrilled to be playing Glastonbury, and happy to sign anything as long as I get a Winnebago to put my wigs in.”

The Daily Mash.

Of course.

Read the real [surreal?] announcement about Dolly's Glastonbury appearance in The Independent.

Any Which Way

I think Miss Minogue needs no excuses - to perform on the Glastonbury stage with the Scissor Sisters! How brilliant is this???

Scissor Sisters featuring Kylie Minogue - Any Which Way (Glastonbury 2010)

A Dame in the rain

Just in!

Dame Shirley Bassey, magnificent at 70, braving the elements at a very wet Glastonbury Festival 2007:

Shirley Bassey live at the Glastonbury Festival