It’s a mud swamp in the middle of Somerset, not at all cute like Shrek’s, instead strewn with plastic bottles, discarded prophylactics and unwashed young people. And others pretending to be. (Young that is.)

Each year, more than 200,000 people turn up to Glastonbury, mostly well-off students or young professionals who can afford the £300 for a ticket, a new pair of Barbour wellies and camping equipment such as the 4,000 tents that will be left abandoned and later sent to landfill.

But why anyone would wish to go there is as much as mystery as Stonehenge. Or Coldplay. Worthy Farm is a field of discombobulated dreams, one gigantic, 1100 acre-sized earache-inducing, invariably sodden slob fest, where you can feed your face from 300 international food stalls and pay three quid for a half pint of Coke - yet the fact no website can quote the number of bars of soap/Lynx body spray sold over the weekend suggests far too few.

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So why would we sign up be part of a webbed-toed world in which your tent (your home for the weekend) is likely to be peed upon, as part of some strange middle-class male ritual, no doubt developed in the halls of Eton or Harrow?

Let’s consider the possible reasons why.

Glastonbury emerged in 1970 as a homage to Woodstock, (1969) but without the sunshine, free love and Janis Joplin and CSN&Y. However, this wurzel Woodstock had T-Rex and sold itself on the hippy commune concept, which immediately conferred some new-agey credence amongst those who loved the idea of wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt and love beads and becoming an eco-warrior for the weekend, before........

© Herald Scotland