Eavis selling Glastonbury tickets door-to-door

SOMERSET, ENGLAND -- With just days to go until the 2008 Glastonbury festival, organiser Michael Eavis has resorted to unconventional tactics to offload the final tickets.

After the event failed to sell out for the first time in years, the baldy farmer will be spending this weekend travelling Great Britain in his Land Rover, knocking on people's doors and attempting to flog the tickets in person.

"I was quite surprised when Michael turned up at my house trying to sell my husband and I tickets for Glastonbury," said one 47-year-old Sheffield housewife. "I said I was getting a bit old for that kind of thing, and besides, it clashes with a friend's wedding."

But take heed, Britons: Eavis is not a man who readily takes no for an answer. "He kept banging on about the favourable weather forecasts, and how Jay-Z was going to confound the naysayers," revealed one would-be punter in Oban, Scotland. "I thought he'd never leave. He literally had his foot in the door at one point."

This latest move follows earlier attempts to sell the residual tickets, including making them available over the counter in music stores and abandoning the pre-registration process.

Speaking to Pop 24 on his mobile from the Outer Hebrides, Eavis yesterday said: "We've been hearing that a lot of people would love to come to the festival, but don't have internet access or live near a HMV. Or have phones: trendy London media types may be surprised to learn a lot of people in this country still aren't on the phone.

"So I've gone back to basics, selling tickets door-to-door, and the response has been largely positive, with a very small number of threats to call the police. We're confident the festival will sell out and be one of our best ever. Also it will not rain all weekend, and everyone will get laid.

"Actually, you can quote me on that: if you come to the 2008 Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Arts, you will definitely get laid."

From today, a limited number of tickets are also available through larger branches of Gregg's the bakers.

Celebrities come together for Camden

LONDON, NW1 -- Some of pop's biggest stars, plus Kelly Osbourne, have joined forces to raise money for the businesses affected by last week's fire in Camden Town.

They have recorded a cover version of Billy Joel's late-'80s masterpiece We Didn't Start The Fire, featuring contributions from Razorlight's Johnny Borrell and troubled crackhead Amy Winehouse, among others.

The song, inspired by Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, features each celebrity singing a line in turn, before joining in for the chorus, which includes the poignant line "We didn't start the fire/We didn't ignite it but we're trying to fight it". The promo video, again in the tradition of Band Aid, features actual studio footage.

But it seems those crazy celebs couldn't put their egos entirely to one side: Pop 24 has learned that Kristen Dunst and Carl Barat nearly came to blows over who got to deliver the pivotal line, "Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball". Both are huge fans of Gen. de Gaulle, who famously blocked Britain's entry to the European Community.

Other guest vocalists include Noel Fielding, Edith Bowman, Russell Brand, Sadie Frost, Alex Zane and Boris Johnson.

We Didn't Start The Fire by the Camden Town All-Stars is released on CD and download on Monday.

Glasto 2007 rumour-mill round-up

• Following people dead: Fidel Castro, Salman Rushdie, the Queen, Baroness Thatcher, Daniel Bedingfield, Cliff Richard, Pete Doherty, Andi Peters
  
• Dame Shirley Bassey to join Manics on stage, cover 'Intense Humming of Evil' in style of Bond theme


• Barat, Doherty to reunite, perform secret gig in Portaloo


• Blair to compere John Peel stage on Sunday (while simultaneously appearing at Labour Party conference in Manchester, disturbingly)


• Mean Fiddler organisation has deliberately disabled mobile phone networks for nefarious purposes unknown


• Guy with dreads on tofuburger stall also selling skunk


• Bin Laden spotted near stone circle


• The Who to take to stage dressed as boy scouts


• Escaped puma from Bristol Zoo loose in backstage area; has attacked Peaches Geldof


• Winehouse handing out fivers

Winehouse offered Government post

WESTMINSTER -- Further controversy surrounded Gordon Brown's plans for Government this evening, after Pop 24 learnt that controversial pop sensation Amy Winehouse has informally been offered a ministerial position.

Sources close to the Brown and Winehouse camps confirmed that the Chancellor met with Winehouse briefly on 17 June to tentatively discuss the offer of a junior ministerial position within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport; most likely a newly created role along the lines of Minister of Jazz, Soul and R&B. It is understood that, as part of the arrangement, Ms Winehouse would have been appointed to the Labour benches of the House of Lords.

Pop 24 understands that Winehouse told the Prime Minister-in-waiting to stick his job up his arse.

Cutty Sark: Ditto arrested

LONDON -- Gossip star Beth Ditto was arrested yesterday in connection with the Cutty Sark fire of a week ago.

Ditto is understood to have been seen in the Greenwich area on 21 May, and there have been reports that she has become increasingly "obsessed" with the nineteenth-century clipper ship in recent months.

At the Gossip/CSS gig at the Manchester Roadhouse three days prior to the blaze, Ditto at one stage incited the audience to chant, "f*** the Cutty Sark." After the event, she was overheard telling a fan: "You know what I like about [Manchester]? It's 200 miles away from that f***ing boat. What's the deal with that, anyway? It's like a huge boat that doesn't even go anywhere? Someone should do something about it. I think you know what I'm saying."

There is speculation within the music industry that Ditto is fed up with being associated with her size and sexuality, and may have started the fire in order to add a new and unexpected element to her persona: namely the destruction of antique sea vessels.

The Metropolitan Police today confirmed they had detained an American woman in her 20s in connection with the fire, which they are treating as suspicious.

Heather Mills bludgeons homeless man with leg

NEW YORK, PROBABLY -- Sir Paul McCartney's estranged wife Mrs Sir Heather McCartney-Mills-McCartney sunk to a new low yesterday when she was seen beating up a homeless man in the street -- with her own artificial leg.

Aghast onlookers looked on aghast as Mills (39), in the US while filming the reality TV show Dancing with the Stars, detached her prosthesis and used it to bludgeon the defenceless vagrant repeatedly in the face and torso, after he asked her if she had any spare "dimes".

According to passerby Senator Hilary Clinton, Mills -- dubbed "Mucca" by the Sun newspaper -- screeched "I am Lady Heather McCartney, and you are not getting a penny from me!" while beating the luckless tramp unconscious. Mills is widely expected to receive £40m in her divorce from the former Beatle.

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