Come Together.

Hundreds of years ago, and only if you had the urge and power to make it so, it would take quite a lot of time and planning to gather even a modest rooms worth of arseholes together. Back then the world was, somehow, both a bigger and smaller place (although, more accurately and to fly in the face of every smart arse, beer-garden mature-student philosopher you’ve ever met, it was the same size as it’s always been) and it had the distinct bonus of having far fewer people in it. We don’t know what proportion of the global population in, let’s take a year at random – 1349, could be classed as arseholes but it may be safe to assume that since there was no social media or internet back then the chances of it being higher than now is very, very, very slim. To lure arseholes from all corners of the globe just to be able to say: “well, gee willy wizz, that sure is a lot of arseholes at once, and look, they’re all in the same place!” would have taken some doing back in 1349. You’d have had to be really quite the big shot, have really quite the clout, or be able to dangle a carrot so long and thick that no donkey could resist it. And you might also pause for a moment and ask yourself why on earth you were trying to do it in the first place – why bother?

These days, arseholes (and their purer form – complete arseholes) come together much more easily. It happens most days in the House Of Commons and in the Oval Office. It happens on GB News and things involving Gary Lineker and at Range Rover show rooms and at young, middle-class-mothers’ coffee mornings and at Sir Kier Starmer’s annual birthday bash. And it happens online all the time – simultaneously almost everyone on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at any one moment in time could arguably represent the great gathering of empty-headed fuckwits yet assembled. And then, at the other end of the scale, you could simply have two couples who have both paused at the same time to consider buying a ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ decorative table carving at a Dunelm Mill. And if you’re wondering where I’m going here, well it brings us nicely to this weekend, which usually heralds one of the biggest gathering of idiots, pillocks, tossers, bell-ends, tits, cocks and, yes, arseholes in the calendar: Glastonbury.

Glastonbury really does take some beating when it comes to bringing arseholes together, albeit something resembling a harmonious gathering, with resentments and frustrations largely tucked away to simmer in the summer heat, usually only boiling over when a stockbroker from Surrey wakes up to find a paralytic property developer from West Hampstead has defecated on the welcome mat of his luxury yurt and tried to blame it on a healing stones wizard on a mobility scooter. Decades ago it must have felt that Glastonbury was just for people who like music but now it appears most people flood to Worthy Farm just to say they’ve been to Glastonbury, or even worse to say they always go to Glastonbury, or even worse than that just to appear in some badly timed BBC crowd footage. It is my idea of hell, which is why I much prefer to sit on my backside at home and watch it all on TV. This afternoon I’ll take a look at the world’s most overrated singer – Sir Rod Stewart – underpower his way through the same old shit, probably finishing himself off over Maggie May. He boasted this week that he could run 100 metres in under 20 seconds and, for me, watching him proving that live on stage would be the highlight of the weekend, ideally followed immediately by him attempting to sing ‘Sailing’ as he vomits his lungs up into Jarvis Cocker’s hat.

Jarvis was there yesterday, performing a ‘surprise’ gig with his staggeringly over-valued band, Pulp, who have been making a living off three mediocre songs for the last 25 years. And the rest is the same as it has been for a while now: singer songwriters with mental health issues, third rate bands with mental health and anxiety issues who once showed some promise but now only seem able to write tunes exclusively for stadiums, groups of obnoxious Gen-Z wet blankets with mental health, anxiety and wellbeing issues who have literally written one song but had the good fortune for it to have gone viral with the LGBTQ and/or ‘I’m having suicidal thoughts’ community and bloody awful Amy Winehouse (who was all mental and no health) imitators (haven’t we had enough of that sub-genre yet?) who dress in expensive frocks but have all the verbal dexterity and hygiene standards of a Victorian prostitute. Christ knows how this lot will cope when Glastonbury has a year off in 2026.

But there are even stranger things at play this weekend because for once Glastonbury, as rammed full of arseholes as it is, has had to share the prize this year with a vast display of power-celebrity, brown-nosing, attention hungry sycophancy in the heart of Venice as Jeff Bezos, a man who would probably have to wipe his own arse with our money if he didn’t already pay someone to do it for him, celebrates his latest marriage (doubtless ill-advised) with a weekend of frivolity, waste and very bad taste. The last time I read anything about Jeff’s love life he had just come out of a divorce that cost him the GDP of Switzerland, but apparently that hasn’t put him off; presumably he doesn’t have to worry about how bloody awful divorce is because he’s got the money and the lawyers to do that for him. To be honest he may as well just do what he wants, because it’s not as if he’s going to spend all his money on something useful like philanthropy instead. In the end he’s very rich and has a very depleted moral core and so he doesn’t really care what people think, because he knows he can just pay for some very famous people to turn up and wave at the crowds and pretend they like him, because they bought their very depleted moral core from the same depleted moral core shop as Bezos himself; that’s why the rich and famous stick together – it’s harder to spot the least worthwhile arsehole when it’s swimming in a whole bucket full of them.

Over the last few days I’ve spotted all kinds of creeps and non-events standing next to a gondola or on a sighing bridge, showing absolutely no shame whatsoever for attending the wedding of a man who thinks the best thing to do with his money (or what used to be my money before I spent it on kitchen towel, gin and a set of foam earplugs) is fire Katy Perry into space. There was Oprah Winfrey, a woman who for some reason is held up as a beacon of integrity and truth, but will just as likely be remembered for spending a bit too much time polishing Meghan Markle’s bum hole. There were huge numbers of the Kardashian/Jenner clan, each one as fundamentally useless to humanity as the next, and former NFL super star Tom Brady who, after announcing his retirement, had the sand beneath his feet stolen, bottled and sold on eBay, such is the emptiness of the 21st century fame game. Orlando Bloom was there, selling his soul for a Kindle upgrade, though oddly not in the company of Katy Perry who might still be weeping into her cornflakes after the space rocket fallout online. Bill Gates was hovering about, looking every inch like someone who wants to look like the bigger man – he says he’s going to give all his money away but I doubt it’ll end up being quite simple as that – and so was Ivanka Trump and her odious looking family. Wow. The conversations over canapes must have been scintillating. Very kindly Jeff asked his stupendously wealthy guests not to buy presents, but I bet at least one person thought to get him the one thing you can buy, even for someone who has everything: an Amazon gift card just as, you know, a gesture. It is at moments such as these that one wishes Venice could do what it keeps threatening too and just fall into the sea, never to be seen again. It can take Glastonbury with it too, though I would miss not having much else to do this weekend. Rod’s on soon so I’d better go. I think he’s doing a duet with Nigel Farage.

G B Burton. 29.06.2025