THE mighty Glastonbury Festival is underway and true to tradition it's arrival was greeted with rain, thunder and mud.

The issue for those with tickets is not just how to extract your vehicle from the muddy fields when you come to leave but simply getting onto the boggy site has been an ordeal for scores of people left sitting in traffic jams for up to nine hours.

Images of people in tears or the rows of tiny tents packed like sardines swimming in mud only serve to make me think, rather them than me!

Here in Southampton we were so incredibly lucky the sun did shine down on our recent two day Common People festival and being right on our doorsteps we could go home at night to our own comfy beds. Roughing it in a pop up tent with a long, perilous night-time trek through an assault course of tent wires and beer cans to a smelly Portaloo - with a queue, does not appeal to me!

Good old Southampton is providing Glastonbury with two of its home-grown stars too- including Craig David who grew up on Southampton's Holyrood estate and attended Bellemoor School and who wowed the Common People crowd as the Saturday headliner last month. The other local star is, of course, Will Champion, former Cantell School pupil and now the drummer with arguably the world's biggest band right now- Coldplay.

Craig will be on Glastonbury's Sonic Stage 7.40-8.40pm on Sunday night and Coldplay will be on the Pyramid stage at 9.30pm, so it will be quite a dash through the crowds of 180,000 revellers, for anyone wanting to watch both!

Now we have another great event to look forward to in Southampton when the 80's retro festival Let's Rock comes to the city's Common on July 9. Nostalgia with a capital 'N' will be the name of the game with a brilliant line-up of stars including Rick Astley who is making his music comeback at the age of fifty with a new album appropriately called '50' that has shot to the top of the charts!

He will be joined by fellow 80's heart-throb Jason Donovan as well as Holly Johnson from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Tiffany, Soul II Soul, Roland Gift, Big Country, The Selecter, Bucks Fizz, Toyah, Dr and the Medics and Sonia. Fun times!

I

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here