No Glastonbury 2012??

Glastonbury to skip a year in 2012 as toilets head to London

From the Guardian UK:

The Glastonbury Music Festival's year off to coincide with Olympics, which will increase demand for portable lavatories.

Mud, rain and battles with the authorities have all failed to stop Glastonbury: it has endured them all and carried on regardless. But it seems the humble toilet has put paid to the festival – for one year at least. The cost of portable lavatories has emerged as the reason for the festival taking a year off in 2012.

Huge demand for toilets – and police – at the London Olympics decided the issue for Michael Eavis, the Somerset farmer who founded the festival.

The festival traditionally has a "fallow year" at regular intervals – most recently in 2001 and 2006 – to allow the land to recover and to give Eavis a rest.

Glastonbury spokesman John Sherlaw said today that 2011 had originally been earmarked, but the Olympic decision concentrated minds.

"We've also been on a roll of big bands booking a very long time ahead," he said. Next year's festival has already sold out.

Eavis said Glastonbury's banks of lavatories were provided by four different suppliers, but the Olympics meant 2012 would be a toilet-supplier's dream year and prices would inevitably be pushed up. "I can see it getting very expensive," he said. "So we looked at the timing and thought that a year off seemed sensible."

In preliminary discussions with Avon and Somerset police, he was also told that all the 600-odd officers usually deployed at Glastonbury would be needed in London. The festival generally takes place a month before the games open on 27 July, but the capital's security will have already been beefed up in June.

Glastonbury has survived other clashes with major sporting events – this year more than 100,000 people watched England play Slovenia in South Africa on a huge screen.

Eavis and his wife Liz plan to use their year off to tour Britain in their yellow Mini, including a visit to the Olympics – where they might get to visit some portable lavatories they recognise from their own fields.