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We've got high hopes for this year's festival, with Maximo Park's officially kicking off Q's Glasto in a matter of hours at The Queen's Head Stage!

On our way down to this year's event we worked out we must have easily at least 300 Glastonbury Festival attendances between us... so we decided to do a quick straw poll of some of the team's best Glastonbury memories, including musical (and non-musical) Glastonbury 'performances'...

Pat Gilbert, Editor, Q Glastonbury Review

Fave musical performance:
It was 2005. It was about 11.30pm on Saturday night and we’d just clocked off from working on the Q Glastonbury Review magazine backstage. A rumour spread that Babyshambles were playing a secret set on the Leftfield Stage, so we all grabbed some beer and trudged up there.

The tent was half full. The half that wasn’t full was amply filled with the charisma of Mick Jones - The Clash legend and Babyshambles producer - and his wife, Miranda. They were standing in the mud wearing green Wellington boots and surrounded by rowdy old punks getting their pictures taken with their hero.

Doherty was in a jolly mood, and on the stroke of midnight got the crowd to start singing Happy Birthday. June 25 had just become June 26, Jonesy's birthday. He was 49. We all clinked plastic cups and Babyshambles piled into a chaotic rendition of White Riot and the crowd went bananas.

I can still see the grin on Mick’s face now. He was genuinely touched and maybe a little embarrassed at being the centre of attention of 1,000 people, standing there in the mud in his green wellies. A real Glastonbury moment.

Fave Glasto memory:
My first Glasto, 1985. The first night it rained, then rained some more. Then it pissed down. A watery sun tried to come out on the Friday morning, and within an hour the mud turned all thick and sticky.

The crowd was cold and pissed off, so to cheer themselves up they started hurling mudcakes at the bands. Was it Ian Dury & the Blockheads who left the stage? I dunno, it could have been, we were having too much fun watching the mud-cakes sail majestically through the air to remember. I recall The Pogues came on at one point and Shane MacGowan got a direct hit in the mouth midway through Boys From the County Hell. Manfully, he soldiered on.

Either that day or the next The Style Council played. They were wearing crisp white Levi’s jeans and jackets. People couldn’t believe their luck. It was like a duck shoot. As the weather had been so appalling (as had the thought no doubt of playing at the then “hippie” festival in the middle of Somerset), Paul Weller had taken the day off being teetotal and was so pissed he could barely stand up.

With mudcakes flying around him like a hail of flak, Weller twirled around to play a guitar solo and fell over into his amp. There was a huge cheer like Glastonbury had rarely heard before or has since. Weller got up, laughed and finished a blinding set. It would be a decade before he would return – and luckily for him the sun was shining this time.

Paul Rees, Q Editor

Fave musical performance:
Somehow finding myself standing on the side of the stage for Arcade Fire's set a couple of years ago. Apparently, they intensely disliked the whole Glastonbury experience. They were still extraordinary.

Fave Glasto memory:
Having a pee next to Lou Reed in the backstage toilets.

Stuart Williams, Managing Director, Q Magazine

Fave musical performance:
Unquestionably Nine Inch Nails, June 23rd 2000. This was before The Wall went up and there were hundreds of thousands of people on site, the vast majority of whom were crammed into the Pyramid Stage field for The Chemical Brothers. Their loss - NIN played a terrifying, glorious, blistering set to about 1000 of us. Sheer bliss.

Fave Glasto memory:
So many. Thom Yorke turning up to the Q bbq, driving Air and Rolf Harris around in my Land Rover, dancing with the Arctic Monkeys at The Queen's Head, thinking the Radio 1 stage was an alien spaceship, but most of all just being in the company of all my mates in the best place in the world!

Dave Henderson, Programme Editor/Queen's Head Talent Booker

Fave musical performance:
Radiohead in 1997. It was a miserable wet weekend and we were doing the daily paper for the first time in a portakabin in a lake. I hadn't seen any bands all weekend and was persuaded to see Radiohead who were phenomenal.

Fave Glasto memory:
My wife shouting "Pixie, is there a pixie here" when she'd been handed the Geldof's coffee by mistake, then telling her to pay more attention instead of gassing to her mates.

Nick Knowles, Marketing Manager, Q Magazine

Fave musical performance:
Orbital in 1994. It blew my 18 year old, Glasto-virgin, mind..

Fave Glasto memory:
Unleasing the giant Q Balls in 2002.

Matt Allen, Editor, Q Glastonbury Daily

Fave musical performance:
Neil Diamond - need I say more?

Fave Glasto memory:
Being a dancing bear for The Flaming Lips on the Pyramid Stage.

Matt Yates, Senior Copy Editor, Q

Fave musical performance:
Tootin Ska Moon, in a field, somewhere... 1994

Fave Glasto memory:
Successfully climbing the fence with friends in 1994 - is that allowed?! (no, it most certainly isn't and is now completely physically impossible - Ed.)

2:09 PM | 25/06/2009