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Michael Eavis at the Ustinov Theatre

A queue was forming outside the Ustinov Theatre last night, with guests packing out the foyer just a few short minutes after the doors opened. Fitting, really, for a man who attracts 150,000 music fans to his farm in Somerset every year for the world’s most famous music festival – and could sell double that amount of tickets if he chose to.

Michael Eavis was in town. No great fanfare accompanied the man, who still describes himself as a dairy farmer first and foremost. Happy, humble and still not quite seeming to believe the success of the Glastonbury festival he founded 41 years ago, Michael Eavis answered questions from host, Greg Ingham and the audience for an hour and a half. The talk, sponsored by Juice Recruitment, was interspersed with film clips from Julien Temple’s Glastonbury film.

Michael had taken his inspiration from the Shepton Mallet festival, and decided that holding a similar event would be a good way of paying off his £5,000 overdraft. Now the festival is run with the aim of balancing a profit for the local community with supporting Michael’s charitable aims of giving away £2mln each year.

Doing good both in his local community and through charities such as Oxfam and Greenpeace is something that Michael is passionate about. He credits it with the secret of his success: “The team are inspired by it. They wouldn’t work so hard if the money were being creamed off for my profit”, he said. But budding events organisers needn’t feel deterred. Embracing charitable works weren’t the only tips Michael gave for long-term success. Being hands on, responsible and always “on top of it” are equally important, as are inspiration and motivation for your team of co-workers.

Michael was himself an inspiration. He talked of his first trip to London (having got up at 4am to milk the cows) to visit music agents in the early 80s, of whom only one, Paul Charles from Asgard, took him seriously. A far cry from today, when he has bands such as U2 and Coldplay on speed dial and only needs The Rolling Stones to play Glastonbury for him to have hosted all the big names - “They’ll do it eventually. Mick Jagger’s daughter has emailed my daughter and Mick wants to do it.”

Questions ranged from his legacy to the commercialisation of the festival and covered his worst moment (he nearly had to cancel in 2008 when he took a risk on JayZ and lost a stone in weight when tickets were slow to sell). Michael answered them all candidly, with great humour and insight and seemed to genuinely to feel blessed by the success of the festival and the magic that surrounds it. “I’ve got the best job in the whole wide world”, he declared. And I don’t think he meant just being a dairy farmer.

All images are courtesy of City of Bath College's Jo Sanders. To see more of her picturers of the event, including the after party, check out our flickr page here.

Thanks to sponsors, Juice Recruitment and Business Link, and also to Suited and Booted Studios for filming the event (video to appear on this page soon!), to Enlightened Lighting for supplying the microphones and to the Ustinov Theatre for hosting this event.

Posted by:

Emma Chappel

Sector:

Music

Tags:

Creative_Bath, Eavis, events, Michael, Ustinov_Theatre