Avoiding inheritance tax, Michael? That's rich!

What dreadful timing! The week before Glastonbury, which comes but once a year, and there's some rather unfortunate news for Sir Michael Eavis.

- BY INDIA BLOCK

It seems Eavis, founder of the hippie field gathering turned middle-class mecca, may be plotting some light tax avoidance. In October last year Eavis, 89, showed some cold-blooded business acumen with a distinctly un-hippie vibe. He passed his shareholding in Glastonbury Festival Events Ltd to his daughter Emily, while three quarters of his shares in Glastonbury Festivals Limited went to a family trust.

Last year, by the way, the festival made £5.9 million profit before tax (thanks to a couple of years of sunshine and the need to rebuild "vital financial reserves" post-Covid), while the whole thing is worth anywhere between £150 million and £400 million.

Eavis and Glastonbury are - in case you've been living under a rock for the past 55 years - by-words for socialist principles. Raised in a working-class Methodist farming family, Eavis has maintained working for social good is what "gets me up in the morning". As he told the BBC in 2018, he is more concerned with his legacy being "what I've done for humanity than what I've done for myself". He refers to "my socialism" in interviews. And this is the festival, lest we forget, that became synonymous with the chant, "Oh Jeremy Corbyn".

Beating Rachel Reeves to the punch