Oh, to suffer the first world woe of missing Glastonbury tickets, just to realise that all of 2025’s festivals are sold out. Like so many other students, stuck on three bars, and without funds to face re-sale, we decided to work one instead. So, this is no regular festival review, no glamping jaunt either – but perhaps somewhere in-between instead, with working showers.

Celebrating an anniversary of 20ish years, Green Man was one of the UK’s first music festivals, with only Glastonbury, Reading, and Leeds as pals around then. Aldershot teenagers turned promoter prodigies Jo Bartlett and Danny Hagan (Jo and Danny of The Buzz Club), the minds that discovered all of your Britpop favourites back in the day, turned their brainpower towards frying bigger fish. Four Tet and Joanna Newsom featured on the first festival’s 2003 lineup, so no wonder today’s offerings continue to be so up to speed with audiences. Under the leadership of Fiona Stewart, the legacy of The Buzz Club lives on.

“A demonstration and celebration for the preservation of all Celtic languages”

After being eased into work with completing a chilled (wince, 7-hour) stint in Babbling Tongues (the empty comedy area), shift F were rewarded with a couple of hours confine to the festival’s Far Out tent, the grounds to bear the arrival of KNEECAP (believe the hype) for the evening. With opening sneers of “shwmae,” their set was an unconventional start to a festival that usually centres folk and indie rock. I recall Mo Chara asking the BSL interpreter, “What’s ‘Fenian C*nt’ in sign language?”. Relentlessly axed from European festivals, KNEECAP’s set proved them to be a force to be reckoned with, undeniable with chants of “Free Palestine” and “Tiocfaidh ár lá” ringing through the Brecon Beacons.

In its entirety, the weekend certainly proved a demonstration and celebration for the preservation of all Celtic languages. Upon the Mountain Stage, CMAT (“Stands for C (erys) Mat (thews)”) covered the Welsh national anthem, Catatonia’s ‘Roadrage’ – dressed in red and enfolded in Y Ddraig Goch. In the light of the Saturday sun, GWENNO sang in a spellbinding combination of Cornish, Welsh and English, teaching the audience to say useful words in the former, like “keus” (cheese)!

“Quite frankly now I’m qualified as a club bouncer”

Friday saw us suffering the torturous stint of manning the Little Folk gate (it was superbly sweet actually – and involved strained grins from dads and high-fives from kids), and hearing surprise act BC Camplight drifting over from the main stage. A similar moment persisted when, later we were reposted and thus forced to stand through the Wunderhorse set whilst directing people down the arena stairs. Accompanied by a backing track of sound issues and Jacob Slater screaming (though sans the typical barking), he told us, “if there’s a God, f*ck him.” Tantalisingly, I could hear the punchy beat of Adult DVD’s ‘Dogs in the Sun’ emanating from a field over, so the shift involved much dancing and yelling “LEFT KEEP LEFT” to those exiting. Totally like herding cats, or rather, the efforts of the seventeen-year-olds failing to form a mosh pit to ‘Purple.’

Like the sporadic moments of onion bhaji wrap devouring across the weekend, our plan for Saturday was to cram in as many acts as we could. We sat in the scorching sunlight to watch Broadside Hacks’ tribute to Bob Dylan. After beautiful folk duets sung by Dan MacDonald and Clara Mann, it was time to go electric, which heralded the prompt movement of various members of The New Eves dressed in slacks, white shirts and dark sunglasses to play the classics. Saturday highlights for me included MJ Lenderman and The Wind (accompanied by audience chants of “it tastes just like it costs”), the troubadour-like Richard Dawson, and Fat Dog – bonkers and very sweaty.

“Some sort of early morning fever dream”

Having slept all day in preparation for our nightshift, jumping in unison with the crowd to Warmduscher’s evening set felt like some sort of early morning fever dream. It was easily my favourite performance of the weekend, and dare I say totally worth missing Getdown Services’ secret gig for. Cape Cod’s Clams Baker Jr. (sustaining the mantra “do good get good”) stalked the stage accompanied by collaborator Nuha Ruby Ra, who danced madly, as the filthiest basslines swung. Before deserting the stage altogether and singing ‘I Got Friends’ from the pit, tossing his mic back onto the sound deck, Clams strode off through the crowd and into the dust of who knows where.

But to my complete horror, I had been posted on the Chai Wallahs stage from 12pm until 7.30am (alone for three and a half hours, quite frankly now I’m qualified as a club bouncer). I endured funk and reggae for five hours of the evening, alongside the hordes of inebriated punters finishing off their weekend with the final club night of the festival. But to be honest, despite my initial hesitancies, it was some of the best moments of Green Man… the highlights (and lowlights) of the graveyard shift included calling medics on various people in various states of intoxication, attempting to speak Welsh to further intoxicated people and dancing around the burnt centre of the festival as the sun rose, where the big man himself once stood.

The Green Man gods were simply at it again, leaving us to work and play in the sunshine with not a whole lot of litter to pick at the end of the festival. But if you don’t fancy undergoing 10 days of camping, or a Wunderhorse show… I would suggest getting organised before banking on getting Glastonbury tickets for the summer.