The Glastonbury Festival opens its doors on Wednesday, and organiser Michael Eavis says he may quit if he cannot stamp out trouble in the local village. Eavis is a baffled man.
"Festival number 25 this one, over a 33-year period, that's not bad is it?" asks the 67-year-old Somerset farmer-turned-festival legend.
"We've just pulled it off somehow," he says, mulling over how his event has gone from being a hippy gathering to the world's most famous festival.
"It's a bit of a miracle and I can never quite understand why it's worked so well."
 Michael Eavis: "We've got more enthusiasm than we've ever had" |
But since the first event in 1970, it has worked and worked so well that this year's 112,000 tickets sold out in record time 12 weeks ago. It boasts some of the biggest bands in the world, with Radiohead - Mr Eavis' favourites - and REM topping the bill.
"I'm very upbeat about it. We've got more enthusiasm than we've ever had and things are going so well," Mr Eavis says.
"It seems as though we've got a niche somewhere in the marketplace which is different from anything else."
Preparing for the first band to take the stage on Friday, Mr Eavis has been tearing around the site fixing last-minute problems and finalising arrangements with performers.
From signing cheques to taking the village pensioners on a guided bus tour of the site, Mr Eavis tries to keep control while making sure the small touches are not ignored.
 I think this is our last chance to get it right - I know I said that last time  |
"I signed about 200 cheques this morning," he said. "I think we're spending loads of money, we're probably spending too much money, but this is the one to make things work this time."
Last year, he proved the site could be made secure and keep gatecrashers out.
But those who could not get in ended up in the local village, Pilton, and some residents said their lives were made "a nightmare".
This year, Mr Eavis must prove he can improve life for locals, some of whom almost persuaded the council to refuse the event a licence this year.
"I think this is our last chance to get it right. I know I said that last time, and we've certainly got the fence right, and now we've got to get the village properly looked after," he says.
 Security was tight at last year's event |
If it does not work, he will think hard about whether it is worth staging the festival at all, he says. "If people are still miserable, there's no point, you know what I mean? I need to convince myself, really, that people are not unnecessarily harrassed by it.
"Really, I have to satisfy myself because I live in this village - I've been born here, all my family live here. I'm a part of it."
He is, though, optimistic that few people will travel without tickets or cause trouble in the village.
It is clear that the festival is in the Eavis blood, but Michael says he has "not really" got a long-term plan.
"I've always said that when I'm 70 I'll probably put my feet up at that point, but I've got another three years to go on that one," he says.
"It's going to be a difficult thing, either to close it down or to hand it on. Whatever we're going to do, it's going to be difficult.
"I've got no idea at all at the moment how I'm going to deal with it. I just wonder whether I can let go, really."
He has suggested handing it over to his daughter Emily, who is the only Eavis child working for the festival full-time.
That little bit of extra care about what's going on is absolutely vital to its success |
The person who takes over would have to have the same attention to detail as him, he says. "If I see something wrong, then I get involved in it. There are things that you have to do oneself, and you can't hand it on.
"That little bit of extra care about what's going on is absolutely vital to its success."
It is the personal touches that have made Glastonbury special, Mr Eavis says, finding an answer to the question of why his festival has become so well-loved.
One of this year's highlights, he points out, will be a giant sculpture of the Lady of Shalott, an Arthurian figure immortalised in a Tennyson poem, that two travellers have been working on for six months.
"These two people have been making this Lady from things from the hedges and the trees - that's the sort of thing that makes Glastonbury different," he says.
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