A Belated The Great Escape 2025 Write Up
21 August 2025
That is because the table to my right is reserved for Sky News and in front of me is BBC. In other words, I got press access at Glastonbury Festival. Our designated area is a banquet of laptops and other unaffordable equipment I could probably sneak into my backpack while the general discussion is whether the best story across the 5-day forecast will be “what Glastonbury looks like at 6 am” or “will Shania Twain bring a horse on the Pyramid Stage?”. I feel intimidated, a journalism virgin surrounded by predators starving for a good story. I realise the usual music review won’t cut it — I need a lead to something special.
The pilgrimage began on Wednesday. The horizon was filled with bell tents and festoon lights as far as the eye could see. I made my bed and soon met with an old friend over a £7 beer. We sat on a bench, ignorant of the unlittered grass, as he told me a secret:
The bridge throughout it has this slight build up of guitar in the background preparing you for whats to come. The bridge explains the experience of sexuality perfectly with references to the different type of people you can fall for and the negatives that come. Then you are hit into this upbeat, fun chorus that really makes this song feel like a pop classics, with that same feeling you could get from listening to songs like ‘girls just want to have fun’ by Cyndi Lauper.
“You know there’s this VIP venue at Glastonbury where, if you know the right person, you can get a lifetime card,” he said, taking a long toke from his cigarette. “It’s called [name retracted] bar. I heard last year Fatboy Slim and Fred Again played there.”
No fucking way. That’s cool.
I remained cautious. I had been let down too many times by whispers cloaked in falsehoods, stories unmasked to be exaggerated and based on brittle truths etched into someone’s imagination. But as I sit here in the press tent, I figure this could be it—my chance to find the most secret bar in Glastonbury.
For the sake of anonymity and to avoid being banned from the festival forever, I will refer to this place as the [name redacted] bar. A quick Google search on Thursday led me to a chain on Reddit confirming its existence.
After completing some initial research – I decided to meet the same friend stationed at The Common district to get more answers. On my way, a chorus of punk rock roots pierced the trees, sending birds flying to a roar of audience applause. At 3:00 pm on a sunny Thursday afternoon, Lambrini Girls came on the Greenpeace stage. Exiting at the path’s junction, I had to check what the fuss was about:
“WAIT WAIT, MOVE THE BABY,” I heard Brighton’s Phoebe Lunny shout. She stood balanced on the stage barrier, held up by security and front row fans, planning to do her signature dive into the sea of hands.
The dirt on the ground cracked and dust bulldozed with the same raging force as the stampede above. Lambrini Girls fuelled a gut-punch performance with defiant words against abuse and stats on domestic violence before shedding into their 2024 single “God’s Country.”
Equipped with a photo pass, I charged on, looking confident as I made my way to the backstage of The Common. Only nodding at staff in acquaintance, I picked up the pace when security took a double take. Peeking behind a window, I spotted my friend coordinating the troops in the production office, signalling the march to the first day of music. Unlike me, he had a lot to do.
He told me all he knew—that the venue had something to do with the downtown countercultural performance shopping district, Shangri-La. Bustling with student actors playing the parts of snub-nosed financial traders and housing agents trying to sell me a mattress on the floor that I could rent out for “more than I’ll ever need!” This year’s theme was ‘Everything (Still) Must Go’.
I saw a man, similarly, aged to me, seemingly locked out of his station on the audience’s side of a pallet door painted to look like the entrance to a grocery store. He looked antsy, having clearly been shot by a pricing gun, covering him in reduction prices. Before he entered, I took my shot, startling him with my presence.
“Hey, do you know anything about the [name redacted] bar?” His friend unlocked the door just in time to hear my words. She pointed me down a dusty road where the green leaves had been ashed in brown. “It’s somewhere back there, behind a fence,” she said. I ran with this new information, shouting my thanks behind me.
Having solved the first clue, I was beaming, but my grin slowly faded as I walked down the path to nothing. Then, hearing more footfall on the opposite end, I began to think they were having me on.
Standing by The Peace Stage at 4:15 pm, it was time for London’s female 10-piece brass ensemble, She’s Got Brass, to walk out to a 1000+ audience in a colosseum-like setup. The first of five performances across the weekend, they stepped out onto the stage as the air was touched with its first bit of breeze in what felt like eternity. The first note glittered, the brass reflected the sun, and jazz greeted dance. Textured covers from Eliza Rose’s “B.O.T.A” and Schoolboy Q’s “Bet I Got Some Weed” got the crowd dancing.
Backstage, I mentioned the secret venue like it was a curse, whispering if anyone knew anything and being met with “no, sorry.”
“I know who could help you,” a voice called out from a caravan. “Talk to Mark; he’s the guy in the hat.”
What hat?
I spun around to see a tall, greying man in a sailor’s hat so big it cast his whole face in a shadow. He moved slowly, the bustle always narrowly avoiding him as if a wrong nudge could throw off the course of the hive-minded ecosystem they had built.
I’m nervous now, but before I even consider my introduction, a man dressed head to toe in sequins asked me if he should play a set in 90 bpm or 120 during his set in 20 minutes. I laughed in his warmth, suggesting a faster pace to get the crowd going. Then he told me Mark hadn’t even given him his artist wristband.
“Mark booked me for Glasto a few years back. I met the mother of my daughter, the godfather to my child, and he still ignores me. I’m supposed to be going on stage in 20 minutes.”
With that introduction, I decided there was no time to piss about. There’s a risk to hanging around too long before he questions who I am or why I am there. I just shouted:
“Mark?”
“Yeah?”
“Can you help me with something?”
“What?”
I can’t remember exactly how I communicated my desperate need to get a ticket to this bar and how it would change my life forever, but when I was done, he smiled at me sadly, like I was a deer he hit with his car, and he wanted to reassure me it would be okay with a bolder between his hands. Like a trick he had rehearsed many times before, he opened his bag and said, “I don’t have any tickets left.”
I had sunglasses on which helped shade the hope that drained from my eyes. I told him not to worry and I thanked him for his time. Just before I walked away, he stopped me, fingered the cardboard photographer pass I had on a lanyard around my neck, and told me I would need to break in backstage, find the production office, and tell them my parents met in the bar and that’s why I needed a ticket. Christ. Writing this now, I wonder if he really is the godfather to the sequin man’s child or if that is another story rehearsed for prestige moons ago.
I did break into the production office, equipped with the message from Mark. I waited in the queue, a couple of artists in front of me leaned into the window, asking about a certain ticket to a bar they could not name. The team said they had no idea what they were asking about. Walking away with their heads down, they clearly had not done enough research. Then it was my turn. I named the bar, they smiled, puzzled as if my appearance did not match their criteria. In their elevated trailer castle, they asked for my name. The pressure of the situation rushed to my face as I introduced myself as “I won’t be on the list; my parents met there.”
The sun rays had injected my brain, any schmooze I had sat as the cast of Mark’s shadow. I was turned politely away and walked out of the guarded section, a little more embarrassing than it needed to be.
Sat alone on dehydrated grass with a £7 beer, day 2 ended with moderate success and movement, I kicked back to a set by The Deep Blue —but my mission was far from over.
By Friday morning, heat had become a thing of the past. There was a lack of communication among festival-goers on whether this day was to wrap up warm or go half-naked and manifest better weather.
The day for me began at 1:00 pm with Olivia Dean on the Pyramid Stage, being gracious, humble, and charming after her opening track ‘Ok Love You Bye,’ skipping around the stage as she spoke. “Bloody hell, wow, biggest crowd I ever played to,” she said. “I’ve been dreaming of this stage since I was 8 years old.”
Then it happened.
I was running. Threading myself through the crowds, toes clenched on my flip-flops, discarded cans biting around my feet so hard even a shake wouldn’t loosen their jaws. I realised the back of my skirt had been hooked into the top of my pants. There was no time to reflect on the matter as I had a lady to speak to.
Chafing legs carried me to the district. I ran down the track previously hinted to me by the reduced shoppers—no one was there. Pivoting a 180-degree turn, I ran back; the lady was gone. Sweat running down my face, I was plain delirious. I decided Mark was the closest thing I had to a breakthrough, and the situation was tender.
Storming back to his stage, I met the area manager’s stare—sweat obnoxiously perfusing from my forehead as I told her I was in need of answers to this place spoken about only in codes. She studied my face with a deadpan expression and told me she would radio Mark—I took shelter behind the door frame.
Next to me, I felt the presence of young soul singer Nellie Charles inviting funk into the spirited crowd, easing into day 3. The breeze prickled against my forehead.
The stage manager sat on the radio for a good 30 seconds before gently placing it down. Deep in my thoughts, I reacted to this cue out of pace, as if I were a child late to my only monologue in the school play. Peeking in, I was firmed for failure.
Silent, I saw her pull a large, dated book out from under the table. With a key in hand, the book became a box, and out from it birthed a single, beautiful, cardboard card. I had the lifetime pass to the bar.
To get into this club, I went to the dirt track, ushered behind a break in the fence I travelled via train carriage during the last hour of the day. Handing me a £6.75 beer, the bartender greeted me with a photo she just took with Gok Wan, capturing the moment they both realized her boob was on full display against his chest. Heavy bass thudded in my torso, and the sky was dark. Stars shimmered through gaps of rich red ribbon quilting overhead. The arena is modest in size but already exclusive in guest list. At 11pm on a Friday night I am an unknown face in a thickening crowd of familiarity, my plan is to get drunk and see where the night takes me – maybe we can talk about it another time, because fuck knows how this is going to end.
