Glastonbury 2014: 10 questions for Jeremy Hardy
How are you finding the festival?
I got here at 9 o'clock Friday morning. I've been trying to get to see stuff and not really getting it together, although I have seen MIA, which was very good. Elliot Steel at the Cabaret tent was very good, as was Mark Steel. And I sneaked into the BBC to watch a Warpaint session being recorded.
You played the Cabaret tent first thing on Saturday. Was it a problem playing so early?
I thought it would be, but actually it was alright, although I had just got up. I had quite a lot of the faithful there. It had stopped raining at that point – if it does rain you get about another thousand people running in.
How do you find festival crowds generally?
A bit young. My demographic aren't very well represented to be honest. People are very exuberant, because most of these people have got jobs and don't get to goof around much. If you don't have a job and your life basically is goofing around then something like this is just sort of an extension of it.
How many Glastonburys have you done?
My first one was in 1985 and then I stopped for 22 years because I hated it so much. Then I came back in 2007 and I've done all of them since then.
What was so bad about '85?
It was horrible. The Peace Convoy were here, and they were quite violent. Class War were going around trashing gigs, and there were drug dealers walking around with their henchmen carrying around baseball bats – it was all a bit wild west for me. I thought "I've got a toilet at home, and I don't really want to be here."
Jeremy Hardy dropped in at the Guardian cabin on Saturday afternoon #Glastonbury pic.twitter.com/Pn3XoPfxbm
— Adam Boult (@adamboult) June 29, 2014
Do you fell a bit more positive about the festival now?
Well, it's a shame in some ways – it's all been bought by a Peugeot dealership and everything's laid on. There's still a healthy smell of sewage and everyone's off their face. Once you get a bit older you get a bit judgemental about people who are off their face. But it's nice really – it's a different place to do my job, which is usually at arts centres and little theatres, and it's all very civilised. It's quite good sometimes to have had no sleep and be covered in mud and to have to entertain a load of people who are very, very hungover.
So will you be heading out dancing tonight?
I'll probably be heading to the Shipping Forecast tent. I'll try not to charge around because you just get tired, so I normally just rely on bumping into people and going for cups of tea. I'll try to see Dolly Parton on Sunday.
Are you into the music side of things?
Some people you don't want to see in daylight, you'd rather see them in a club, or Brixton Academy – it can spoil the magic a bit seeing them outside in the daylight, when there maybe isn't the atmosphere.
Any recommendations from the comedy line-up?
Most people in the Cabaret tent are good. People should go and see Elliott Steel, Mark Steel, Steve Gribbin. There's been good people on at the Leftfield, like Francesca Martinez. I try not to plug other comedians because they're competitors, and I'm not very supportive of rivals.
Do you spend much time up at the Green Fields?
Yes – my friend Asif Choudhury was at the Burma Tea tent giving out information about the persecution of the Rohingya Muslims – giving out free tea and then trying to educate them. And my partner took a free trapeze lesson. I like the Green Fields, though I'm very scornful of them.
Why scornful?
Well, it's full of people trying to find cures for mournful introspection. I'd like to go into the Healing Fields and say "have you got anything for bowel cancer?" to wind them up.
Jeremy will be touring the UK this Autumn