Swine flu fails to rock Glastonbury
Organisers confirmed three people had been sent home from the Worthy Farm site at Pilton in Somerset on Saturday after being diagnosed with the virus.
Two students from Exeter and Edinburgh universities and child of 10 were taken to isolation facilities following the diagnosis, before going home.
Festival spokesman Christo Hird said the cases were unconnected and organisers had anticipated swine flu outbreaks at the festival. He said: "The figure of three in 177,000 people is regarded as very low."
Music fans took the news without panic and many felt the news was inevitable.
Susan Monaghan, a 45-year-old gardener from Windsor, said: "I thought it was going to happen. It's not very serious anyway. If I was worried I wouldn't have come here."
Clare Meins, 30, a housewife from Surrey, said: "As with the flu, it will attack the vulnerable. But I don't see myself as vulnerable. Life's too short to live in fear."
Organiser Michael Eavis also revealed yesterday that headliner Bruce Springsteen cost him £3,000 when his set breached a curfew by nine minutes – but the farmer still declared this year's festival the "best ever".
Mr Eavis praised Sprinsgteen's stamina at the age of 58 after he played for two hours and 40 minutes, finishing just before 12.40am. But the mammoth set on Saturday night put the rocker beyond the watershed, Eavis said. The owner of the 900-acre Somerset farm said he did not mind because Springsteen played some of his best-known works in the last few minutes.
Mr Eavis said: "Paul McCartney – 2004 headliner – paid me back. I'm going to pay the Bruce Springsteen one myself. It's not a lot because it was fantastic.
"The last nine minutes were spectacular."
Speaking at a press conference about the festival yesterday, Mr Eavis said: "I know I say this every year but this must be the best one ever."
He said last year's controversial headliner, American rapper Jay-Z, seemed to have brought "the youngsters" back to the festival.
And he said this year's performance by British MC Dizzee Rascal was "on a par" with Jay-Z. The MC was one of many artists to pay tribute to Michael Jackson during his set at the festival.
Mr Eavis refused to reveal any possible headliners for next year, although he said three were already "lining up".
It also emerged yesterday that a pregnant woman went into labour near the festival's Stone Circle on Saturday.
The woman left the site to have her baby and so the infant was denied the distinction of being the first Glastonbury birth since 1998.
The woman, a regular Glastonbury goer, is understood to have been keen to deliver the child in the Green Fields. She asked for help from "naturopathic experts" from the Healing Fields, rather than conventional painkillers.
By a stroke of luck her midwife was on the onsite medial team. It was decided that for safety they should move to the midwife's practice in a nearby village.
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