Impenetrable jenga towers of beer!
I'm not the festival type, really. Something within my parameters of personal comfort prohibits me from sharing a toilet cabin with a thousand other peons, and the chance of being caught servicing Mrs Badger within the confides of my tent is somewhat offputting to my stamina.

Most importantly, I'd be willing to pay good money for what I feel is a good value amount of entertainment - the golden rule being the only people fitting in to a festival were those who refused to pay. I know I am not welcome there as I am indeed a straight-laced spineless chump of biblical proportions, but back in the Summer of 2004 fate threw me an Eastern European screwball.

Back then, I was working what I could at a certain alcoholic beverage company known for toying with the music scene. Not enough hours to blag free tickets by all means, but enough to assign me the responsibility of offloading pallets of watery beer off the truck and into the tent. Well, that was the plan, but some muppet assigned me to work with our blessed lorry driver, Polish Dave.

Polish Dave was called Polish Dave because of his habit of being Polish, and had all the cultural understanding of a Gumby. Who was clocked by a member of the public with one foot out the window, steering with the other? That's Polish Dave and his wet nail polish. Who pierced a hole into the bottom of the pack of fags and proceeded to smoke them all simultaneously? Polish Dave was bored. Who spent the entire morning run impersonating Sir Terry of Wogan every time the broadcaster spoke, despite it being Radio 1? Polish Dave doesn't understand channel frequencies.

Now when the radio's newsbeat story mentions the large number of teenagers sneaking into the festival we were delivering to, who else would decide to sneak me in 'for the hell point of it' than Polish Dave, ignoring the fact I already had a legitimate (albeit temporary) access right.

His rationale was simple; mine out the beers from the bottom of the pallet and fit me in the space opened up, like a giant game of Jenga. With more than a few tins in my system on the company's behalf, I decide it isn't a bad idea.

An hour later we pull into the public parking to drop off the delivery, which may have been the stupidest idea ever conceived as thirsty queue jumper after thirsty queue jumper watched eagerly as Dave wheeled a 10ft tower of beer alongside them nonplussed to his situation.

I've never seen a zombie attack in person before, but this is the closest I got. Realising the potential reward, they started following us. Slowly at first, but their evolution from Night of the Living Dead zombie to the 28 Days Later incarnate (despite not technically being zombies) became apparent. I was being chased through a field by a crowd of teenagers within a large tower of pisswater steered by an eccentric Pole. I did the only thing I could do; I offloaded as much beer-ammo as I could furiously in the direction of the drinkers, but that only made them worse. Then it happened; the tower started collapsing. Reluctant to being crushed by a half tonne of alcohol (although in hindsight, I couldn't think of a better way to go), I abandoned ship and was nicked by security who told me to fuck off to my tent and never grace their vision again. The only problem was I didn't have a tent; I wasn't supposed to be there anyway.

The moral of this story is that if you saw a long haired bloke screaming at security guards that he didn't belong at Reading 2004 while 50 people shook his hand for being an internationally recognised provider of beer, I should apologise for causing a scene. The only ones who looked a bigger twat than me were those who paid to see The Darkness headline Friday.

No apologies for length; it's the only reason we're together.
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Tue 9 Jun 2009, 16:03, Reply)