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Glastonbury gas pipe gyration drama

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 25 November 2015

Glastonbury Festival might have to move to a new site at some point in the future, unless people can be convinced to stop dancing on a gas pipe. Or not, depending on which Glastonbury boss you choose to listen to.

According to Noisey, while speaking at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute in Dublin recently, founder Michael Eavis said: “We’ve got a gas main running through the site, a big gas pipe coming down from the North of England to Torquay. They [Mendip District Council and gas technicians] said this is dangerous and I said, ‘Well it’s been there for years and so have we’. So every year they make a fuss about this pipe”.

He went on: “We’re supposed to stop people dancing on the pipe, which is a pretty impossible thing to do. They say that if they are all dancing on the pipe at the same time they could fracture it”.

As of last year, he said, a compromise was reached to “to turn the pressure down on the pipe” during the festival, but he has already identified an alternative site nearby, just in case its decided that the dangers are too high.

This is the sort of story people normally finish with a line like, “ha ha ha, but of course that would never actually happen”. But isn’t this basically almost exactly what forced T In The Park off its old site this year? Oh shit. Goodbye Worthy Farm.

But wait! It’s alright. Emily Eavis has now said that it’s all been a big misunderstanding.

“There seems to have been a misunderstanding about the gas line which runs under a part of the festival site”, she said, according to The Guardian. “We work closely with the National Grid to ensure all necessary precautions are taken in relation to the gas line. This means we can continue running the festival on Worthy Farm, without any issues connected to this”.

So, please, dance where you wish.